The number of families in Wyoming and across the nation struggling to put food on the table rose dramatically last year, according to a new report from the U.S. Department of Agriculture. In 2021, 13 million Americans did not know where their next meal would come from. .
Just as New York is making a huge investment in offshore wind, New Jersey s largest offshore wind farm project has been canceled. Project owner Orsted cited economic reasons for the cancellation. The contracts to develop Ocean Wind 1 and 2 were negotiated in 2018 but the company said recent inflation on construction products has made pursuing the projects challenging. .
School board elections in Idaho on Tuesday could impact what students are allowed to read. Although school board elections are often overlooked, they ve increasingly become races to watch - in part because of a rise in "book bans" that supporters say protect kids from content that some consider "obscene." Kurt Zwolfer is director of The Cabin, a center for readers and writers in Boise. He said he thinks school boards are overstepping their duties, when librarians and educators are trained to do the work of book curation. .
Despite the roaring economy, food insecurity got worse in 2022 - nationally and in Los Angeles County. New data from the U.S. Department of Agriculture shows 12.8% of American households were food insecure last year, an increase of more than 2.5% from 2021. .
Children of color and from low-income families in Colorado and across the nation are not only exposed to more dangerous toxic chemicals - including lead, tailpipe and other air pollution, plastics and pesticides - they also experience disproportionate harm to brain development compared to their white and higher income peers, according to a new report. Co-author Devon Payne-Sturges - an associate professor at the University of Maryland - said five decades of data shows that poverty exacerbates these impacts. "Studies have found that the combined experience, say, of exposure to lead in the environment - and being from an impoverished community, or a low-income family," said Payne-Sturges, "actually worsened the negative cognitive impacts." Americans of all ages are exposed to some level of toxins in the air, water and soil, but children are especially vulnerable to exposures that can make it harder for them to thrive as adults. " .