The report attributed the historically high number to several factors, including a multiyear surge in home prices and fast-rising rent costs, a reduction in covid-era assistance, stagnating wages and overburdened homeless service systems — the latter at times exacerbated by influxes of migrants. (Kornfield, Paquette & Hennessey-Fiske, The Washington Post)
Read MoreThe 0.9% increase in 2024 was a slight slowdown from 2023, when the world population grew by 75 million people. In January 2025, 4.2 births and 2.0 deaths were expected worldwide every second, according to the estimates. (Schneider, AP News)
Read MoreProf Dawkins, the evolutionary biologist and atheist, stepped down from the board of the Freedom From Religion Foundation (FFRF) on Saturday after it censored an article supporting the belief that gender is biological. Prof Dawkins accused the group of caving to the “hysterical squeals” of cancel culture after it deleted the article from its website, saying it was a “mistake” to have published it. (Henderson, The Telegraph)
Read MoreDepending on how the Supreme Court rules, we may be in the final days of TikTok in the U.S. But it continues to be a powerful platform for creators and communities the world over, "particularly with young people in the Global South," says Payal Arora, a digital anthropologist at Utrecht University. (Daniel, NPR)
Read MoreThe year’s news in religion was dominated by a war already in progress on Jan. 1 between Hamas and Israel. Though not at root a religious war, as the months went by the conflict supercharged American-Jewish divisions over Israel, fractured some Jewish-Muslim alliances and made antisemitism on campus a rallying cry for the right. (Religion News Service)
Read MoreThere’s a reason why even streamers like Netflix now want a piece of the live sports action. It’s what rules our viewing habits, as witnessed by Variety‘s annual list of the year’s 100 most-watched primetime telecasts. (Schneider, Variety)
Read More