A new United Nations report blares dire warnings of the escalating effects of climate change: Our planet is no longer on the brink of catastrophe; the catastrophe is well underway. How we respond now will determine how horrific things get for nature and humanity.

Three consecutive chopped-up school years have had the expected effect on student learning. New research shows that growing numbers of kids are falling behind in reading, with Black and Hispanic as well as low-income and disabled children suffering the most. American public schools were no great shakes at literacy instruction before COVID. Now we’re in a full-blown educational emergency.

Many of us in America feel a need now to somehow confront the Russian government and its strongman leader Vladimir Putin over the unjust and illegal invasion of Ukraine.

There is no data on global plastic pollution that is equivalent to the regular measurements of carbon dioxide in the Earth’s atmosphere. But as with greenhouse gases, the recent news has been nearly all bad. In 1950, worldwide production of plastics stood at 2 million tons per year. In 2020, it was 367 million tons (down from 368 million the year before due to the coronavirus pandemic). An increase this enormous is hard to visualise. But the 8.8m tons of plastic waste that is estimated to enter the world’s marine environment each year is the equivalent of a rubbish truck filled with plastic being tipped into the sea every minute.

President Joe Biden’s announcement Tuesday banning Russian oil imports presents what may be the most difficult test yet of Americans’ willingness today to sacrifice for the nation’s greater good. Already-high gas prices are sure to spike further with the ban, frustrating drivers and giving Republicans an opportunity to further demagogue the issue. The GOP should resist that urge — and all Americans should remember sacrifices that earlier generations made in times of war.

Animals don’t wage war, yet they—along with innocent civilians—are often among those most affected by battle. The events unfolding in Ukraine bear this out.

LVIV, Ukraine — Every day for Ukrainians has become a nightmare. Troops in Russian helicopters land in neighborhoods, break into civilian houses, destroy buildings with tanks and fire their weapons at hospitals and orphanages. The stores are running out of bread and milk and the pharmacies are emptying of medicine. Putin calls it a special “denazification” and demilitarization operation and is not shy about saying he wants to take over all of Ukraine.

In an executive order last month, President Joe Biden moved to divide and release $7 billion from Afghanistan’s central bank — funds frozen after the Taliban takeover of the country. Half would go to meet urgent Afghan humanitarian needs, and half would apparently be disbursed to a subset of U.S. terrorism victims’ families who’d recently won claims against the Taliban in Manhattan federal court. (We say apparently because the language of the order isn’t entirely clear.)

In his State of the Union address, President Joe Biden told Americans that he had a realistic plan for bringing down inflation. The agenda he laid out, however, has little chance of doing so.

Instagram recently announced that a central pillar of its response to teen mental health harms will be to create controls offering parents “to see how much time their teens spend on Instagram and to set time limits.” While this may sound empowering, it is, unfortunately, part of an unwelcome campaign to shift the burden of responsibility onto parents.

The State of the Union, more than any other presidential address, is a heavily negotiated speech. Presidents are always speaking to multiple audiences, but never more than when they fulfill their constitutional obligation to “give to the Congress Information of the State of the Union.”

On Jan. 18, the day the federal government’s website allowing Americans to order free at-home COVID tests opened (one day before its official launch, and the only time anything in this story happens ahead of schedule), we requested ours. At 1:44 p.m. came the U.S.P.S. order confirmation email, which added: “At home COVID-19 tests will ship free starting in late January.”

Russian President Vladimir Putin’s war of aggression against Ukraine is in full swing, with the final outcome unknown. Given Russia’s military dominance over the Ukrainian army, few seem to doubt that if the assault continues, the Russian army will defeat the Ukrainian military.

No matter how Vladimir Putin’s invasion of Ukraine ends, it already marks a turning point in history: the end of a 30-year period of relative peace in Europe and a return to hostility between Russia and its neighbors — a kind of Cold War 2.0.

Not since 9/11 has an unprovoked hostility been so clearly defined as good versus evil. The Russian invasion of Ukraine has, if nothing else, sidestepped the usual vagaries of who started what or who is the victim and who is the aggressor. On the one side is Ukraine, a sovereign nation. the second largest in land mass in Europe. On the other is Russia’s authoritarian ruler, Vladimir Putin, with an enormous military and an unbridled desire to return his country back to the Soviet Union days.

The most conspicuous victims of Russia’s unprovoked invasion of Ukraine are the people who will lose their lives in defending their country against a brutal (and nuclear-armed) neighbor. But Vladimir Putin’s decision to launch a many-pronged attack — an audacious operation the United States predicted but was unable to prevent — is also a devastating assault on international norms and potentially a harbinger of a wider war in Europe.

Historically, “national defense” meant uniformed soldiers and sailors and pilots in tanks, ships and planes. But in warding off Moscow’s coming blows against the U.S. as the West lays on punishing sanctions on Vladimir Putin and Russia for gobbling up parts of Ukraine, our “defense” will fall as much to people in button-up shirts and jeans armed with computer keyboards and mice across America. These are the “troops” running IT and back-end digital systems for thousands of banks, power plants, dams, hospitals, communications networks and other pieces of critical U.S. financial and physical infrastructure.

With inflation at a 40-year high, politicians understandably want to ease inflationary pains.

The U.S. Food and Drug Administration accelerated the approval of a drug called Makena meant to prevent premature births. Now there’s mounting evidence that the drug does not work. The FDA should use its authority to pull Makena from the market until and unless the company that makes it can prove that it is effective.