Author: Olive Metuge

This article was produced for ProPublica’s Local Reporting Network in partnership with The Salt Lake Tribune. Sign up for Dispatches to get stories like this one as soon as they are published. The last time Sam met with his therapist, Scott Owen, the session was nothing more than an hour of Owen sexually abusing him, he told a Provo, Utah, courtroom this week. Sam remembers sitting in his car afterward, screaming as loud as he could. “I could feel him all over my skin,” he said. “I could not believe this was happening.” It was October 2017, and Sam had…

Myanmar’s junta chief Min Aung Hlaing is in Thailand for a regional summit as his country reels from an earthquake that killed thousands and left cities in ruins.The earthquake in central Myanmar last Friday killed 3,085 people and injured 4,715, the junta has said. Hundreds more are missing and the toll is expected to rise.Min Aung Hlaing arrived in Bangkok on Thursday, according to AFP, on the eve of a summit that will gather leaders of the seven countries that border the Bay of Bengal.His attendance, which was earlier confirmed by a spokesman for the Myanmar army, will be unusual…

Scientists may have produced the strongest evidence yet that the shingles vaccine is linked to reduced dementia risk.Using the health records of more than 280,000 older adults in Wales, researchers found those who received the shingles vaccine were 20 per cent less likely to develop dementia over the next seven years than those who did not receive the vaccine.The findings, published Wednesday in the journal Nature, build on other recent studies that have demonstrated associations between herpes virus infections and an increased risk of developing dementia.Lead author Pascal Geldsetzer, from Stanford University, said the protective effects of the vaccine appeared to be…

ARGUMENT ANALYSIS By Amy Howe on Apr 2, 2025 at 6:41 pm Protesters gather outside the court on Wednesday morning. (Amy Howe) The Supreme Court on Wednesday was divided over whether Planned Parenthood has a legal right under federal civil rights laws to challenge the order by South Carolina’s governor barring abortion clinics, including Planned Parenthood, from participating in Medicaid. During more than 90 minutes of oral arguments, the justices struggled to determine whether the Medicaid law on which Planned Parenthood relies must use specific words to signal that Congress intended to create a private right to enforce it –…

Home Daily News Climate change case that ‘ignited a movement’… U.S. Supreme Court Climate change case that ‘ignited a movement’ ends with Supreme Court’s cert denial By Debra Cassens Weiss March 25, 2025, 2:01 pm CDT Kelsey Cascadia Rose Juliana of Oregon, the lead plaintiff in Juliana v. United States, speaks at a rally in June 2019. (Photo by Steve Dipaola/The Associated Press) The U.S. Supreme Court on Monday refused to revive a climate change lawsuit filed on behalf of 21 youths who contended that the government is a trustee of the environment and has a duty to preserve it.…

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ProPublica is a nonprofit newsroom that investigates abuses of power. Sign up to receive our biggest stories as soon as they’re published. Three federal lawmakers are calling on the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development to stop any initiatives involving cryptocurrency and the blockchain, saying the scantly regulated technologies should be kept far away from the agency’s work overseeing the nation’s housing sector. In a letter to HUD Secretary Scott Turner on Wednesday, Reps. Maxine Waters, Stephen Lynch and Emanuel Cleaver sharply criticized the agency for considering such experiments, given cryptocurrency’s volatility and vulnerability to fraud. The Democratic representatives,…

Getty ImagesMore than 2,700 people were killed in a devastating earthquake that hit Myanmar on 28 MarchIn the immediate aftermath of an earthquake, there is a 72-hour “golden window” when those trapped under rubble are most likely to survive.But in the 72 hours after a 7.7 magnitude quake struck Myanmar on Friday, rescue and relief workers seeking access to some of the worst-hit areas were blocked by military authorities, multiple aid and human rights groups told the BBC.This was despite a rare plea for international humanitarian assistance by junta chief Min Aung Hlaing.”I would like to invite any country, any…

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is scheduled to arrive in Hungary’s capital on Wednesday to meet with the country’s prime minister, despite an international arrest warrant for the Israeli leader over the war in the Gaza Strip.Netanyahu’s four-day visit to Budapest is a sign of both his close relationship with Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán and the latter’s growing hostility toward international institutions, like the International Criminal Court, of which his country is a member. Orbán, a conservative populist and close Netanyahu ally, has vowed to disregard the ICC warrant against the Israeli leader, accusing the world’s top war crimes court based…

WHAT WE’RE READING By Ellena Erskine on Apr 2, 2025 at 9:38 am We are expecting one or more opinions from the court this morning. Join us for the live blog starting at 9:45 a.m. EDT. Following the opinion announcements, the court will hear oral arguments in Medina v. Planned Parenthood South Atlantic. The case is a dispute over South Carolina’s attempt to exclude all Planned Parenthood services from the state’s Medicaid program because it provides abortions — specifically, whether Planned Parenthood and one of its clients even have a legal right to sue to enforce the Medicaid Act. Each weekday,…