Many of the tombs in Japan are elaborately decorated. Nearby visitors can buy flowers, buckets. brooms and other gardening tools to tidy up the graves.
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In a Japanese tree burial, cremated remains are placed in the ground and a tree is planted over the ashes to mark the gravesite. Environmental responsibility is part of Buddhism.
A march along historic South Road Street in Elizabeth City, North Carolina, protesting the police shooting of Andrew Brown Jr.
AP Photo/Steve Helber
Many Americans first heard of Elizabeth City, North Carolina, when protests began after Andrew Brown Jr. was killed by sheriff’s deputies. But the city has a long history of fighting racial injustice.
With the evidence uncovered by paleontologists, an artist sketched El Bosque Petrificado Piedra Chamana as it might have looked long before humans.
Mariah Slovacek/NPS-GIP
Un profesor de patología describe las dificultades a las que se enfrenta el desarrollo de una vacuna eficaz contra el VIH/SIDA.
The Maricopa County Election Department counts ballots in Phoenix on Nov. 5, 2020. Arizona’s election laws are the subject of a pending Supreme Court decision.
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In Brnovich v. DNC, the court will decide whether two Arizona rules unfairly hurt poor, minority and rural voters. The ruling could determine the fate of many states’ restrictive new voting laws.
Satellites can quickly detect and monitor wildfires from space, like this 2017 fire that encroached on Ventura, California.
NASA Earth Observatory/Joshua Stevens
Satellites can already spot a new fire within minutes, but the information they beam back to Earth isn’t getting to everyone who needs it or used as well as it could be.
A drilling pad for oil and gas in Robinson Township, Penn.
Robert Nickelsberg/Getty Images
Abandoned US oil and gas wells and their associated land cover more than 2 million acres, a recent study estimates – an area larger than Delaware and Rhode Island combined.
Some students were 7-8 months behind on average in math and reading.
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The accusation of bias is like kryptonite for responsible news organizations: the stronger their piety to the ideal of objectivity, the more vulnerable they are to complaints made in bad faith.
Migrants hoping to reach the distant U.S. border walk along a highway in Guatemala in January 2021.
AP Photo/Sandra Sebastian
Climate migrants don’t fit neatly into the legal definitions of refugee or migrant, and that can leave them in limbo. The Biden administration is debating how to identify and help them.
Voters line up to cast their ballots at a polling station in Ayahualtempa, Mexico, on June 6, 2021.
Hector Vivas/Getty Images
The latest movie to take on this classic story sentimentalizes history in the name of inspiring religious devotion.
A protest against bride kidnapping in Kyrgyzstan’s capital, Bishkek, on April 8, 2021, after a young woman abducted for marriage was found dead.
Vyacheslav Oseledko/AFP via Getty Images
In rural Kyrgyzstan, 1 in 3 marriages begins with an abduction. Older generations see this as a harmless tradition, but two brides have been killed since 2018. A study finds other problems, too.
Drought’s effects on the population slowed the Ottoman Empire’s expansion in the 16th century.
Lessing Archives
Poison can be a deadly defense that helps a mushroom make sure its spores are spread to new places to grow into baby mushrooms.
It doesn’t take a human mind to produce misinformation convincing enough to fool experts in such critical fields as cybersecurity.
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Priyanka Ranade, University of Maryland, Baltimore County; Anupam Joshi, University of Maryland, Baltimore County, and Tim Finin, University of Maryland, Baltimore County
Bots flooding social media with fake news about politics is bad enough. Muddying the waters in such fields as cybersecurity and health care could put lives at risk.
The prevention of future pandemics requires examining viral family trees.
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Anti-atheism is ingrained in American politics. A refusal to remove outdated language from state Constitutions perpetuates this prejudice.
People with the Pride Alliance Network, sponsored by Starbucks, walk along Ocean Drive during the 11th annual Pride Parade as part of Miami Beach Pride week on April 7, 2019, in Miami Beach, Florida.
While many companies promote social causes, advocates are skeptical of how genuine their commitment is.
Salvadoran president Nayib Bukele promised voters change. Instead, he seems to be reviving El Salvador’s authoritarian past.
Camilo Freedman/SOPA Images/LightRocket via Getty Images
El Salvador ‘is inching back toward its authoritarian past’ after President Nayib Bukele fired five supreme court justices and the attorney general – essentially the only checks on his power.
For many taxpayers, it doesn’t end on Tax Day.
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A research team found that crowdfunding is a popular way to support social justice causes. They also determined that little of this charitable giving supports strangers.