Secular News

Ever get the feeling the Florida Legislature hates you? It does. Unless you’re a developer, a lobbyist, or a fetus. Members are filing hell-born bills for the 2026 session, many apparently designed to torment you, rob your children of their futures, and reduce this state to an ICE-filled, disease ridden, constantly flooding, unaffordable autocracy. Perhaps […]

A large fire broke out Saturday evening at The Moon of Saucon Valley, formerly known as The Meadows, a popular banquet and event facility in Lower Saucon Township, just outside Hellertown.

The trouble started one wet Friday morning in late October when Jarom Smith walked past a weathered red gate in a brushy area near the southwest corner of the Emporia city limits. Smith, a citizen journalist, wanted a couple of photos of the old police shooting range inside to post for his readers. “I simply […]

Three days in, after a tax U-turn and partial climbdown on workers' rights, Laura Kuenssberg looks at what impact Budget week might have.

The U.S. government has caused massive food waste during President Donald Trump’s second term. Policies such as immigration raids, tariff changes and temporary and permanent cuts to food assistance programs have left farmers short of workers and money, food rotting in fields and warehouses, and millions of Americans hungry. And that doesn’t even include the administration’s actual destruction of […]

Adrienne Murray meets the engineers designing icebreaker ship technology for the Arctic.

Artificial intelligence and robots have potential to boost agricultural production — and their possibilities are only beginning, a University of Florida researcher told the Florida Senate last week. UF broke ground this month on the Center for Applied Artificial Intelligence in Agriculture at the Gulf Coast Research and Education Center in Hillsborough County. According to […]

A 16-year-old Palestinian American youth from Brevard County was released from an Israeli prison Thursday after being held since February on allegations of rock throwing in the West Bank. The U.S. State Department confirmed the release of Mohammed Ibrahim in a statement sent to the Phoenix on Friday. “The Department of State welcomes the news […]

TOPEKA — A national organization supporting social workers restructured, stripping Kansas of its local executive director and leaving a long-time system advocate without a job. Becky Fast, who has led the Kansas chapter of the National Association of Social Workers since 2017, was let go from her position when NASW announced internally two weeks ago […]

BARTON COUNTY — The problem sounds easy: Kansas has too few houses for sale, especially in small, rural communities struggling to attract young people and new businesses. The simple answer is to build more houses. But those in real estate say this shortage has been years in the making, and it may take years and […]

How best to spend, save and raise money will be a recurring theme when Washington lawmakers convene in Olympia next week for their annual “committee days.”  The state is facing a budget shortfall that’s poised to dominate the 2026 session, which begins Jan. 12. Data centers, vaccine safety, bridges hit by trucks, and the states […]

“Oh, I love writing my columns.” With those words, Republican candidate for governor Charlotte O’Hara launched into her answer to my question: Why write and publish dozens of personal political columns on her campaign website? “I think that many candidates speak in platitudes and they don’t speak in specifics,” O’Hara said this week. “That’s a […]