A Nobel Prize-winner’s debut novel and works about race and gender were among the books most targeted by ban campaigns last year. “Gender Queer,” an autobiographical graphic novel written by nonbinary author Maia Kobabe, was the most challenged library book in 2023 (De Avila, The Wall Street Journal)
Read MorePaganism is the fastest growing religious group in the British Armed Forces, The Telegraph can reveal. Followers of the pagan faiths, who typically sport beards as a lifestyle choice, numbered 660 at the start of the year across the Armed Forces, up 144 per cent from 270 in April 2020. (Turner, The Telegraph)
Read MoreThere are some sobering caveats to the good news. One is that teen overdose deaths have sharply risen, with fentanyl-involved deaths among adolescents doubling from 2019 to 2020 and remaining at that level in the subsequent years. (Richtel, The New York Times)
Read MoreThe Vatican on Monday declared gender-affirming surgery and surrogacy as grave violations of human dignity, putting them on par with abortion and euthanasia as practices that reject God’s plan for human life. (Winfield, AP News)
Read More"What we're trying to achieve here is to provide whales with certain rights," Takoko told Morning Edition. "Those rights include the right to freedom of movement, natural behavior, development, cultural expression – which includes language – to a healthy environment, healthy oceans, and indeed the restoration of their populations." (Depenbrock, NPR)
Read MoreMore than 250 Holocaust survivors have joined an international initiative to share their stories of loss and survival with students around the world during a time of rising antisemitism following the Oct. 7 Hamas attack on Israel that triggered the war in the Gaza Strip. (Grieshaber, AP News)
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