Since it first began in 1981, the HIV epidemic has killed more than 44 million people. For a generation, a diagnosis was essentially a death sentence, and for much of the world it remains a daily threat, with some 1.3 million people newly infected in 2024 alone. But something remarkable has happened. Deaths from HIV-caused […]

On June 5, 1981, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention published a brief, clinical report in its Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report about five young men in Los Angeles who had developed a rare and deadly form of pneumonia.  The write-up, barely a page long, ran in between a report on dengue infections among […]

The United States is one of the only countries on Earth that doesn’t guarantee new parents paid leave after a child is born — time to recover, bond with a newborn, and get on your feet as a new family. Only about one in four private-sector workers has access to it, and among the lowest-wage […]

This story appeared in The Logoff, a daily newsletter that helps you stay informed about the Trump administration without letting political news take over your life. Subscribe here. Welcome to The Logoff: President Donald Trump’s war with Iran has pushed US gas prices to their highest point in more than three years.  What happened? On Tuesday, the […]

In the warm waters of the Gulf of Mexico lives one of the world’s rarest and most elusive marine mammals: Rice’s whale. There are just 51 of them left, according to the most recent scientific estimates, meaning they are quite literally on the knife’s edge of extinction. That’s why, in 2019, the federal government — then […]