Breaking News

Opinion

Woman weighs treatment against her potential risk of fracture

Columns

DEAR DR. ROACH: I’m a very healthy and active 74-year-old woman, and I’m also quite proactive with my health. I get bone scans done every two years and have osteopenia in both my hips and spine. But because of a T12 fracture in 2018, which was followed by a kyphoplasty, I was recently recommended to see a specialist for more extensive blood work and scans. These scans also showed osteopenia, but in my wrists (which were never previously scanned), I have severe osteoporosis. With the severe compression between the T11 and T12 vertebrae, I know I need to do something. The first ...

Autonomous weapons can select targets without human help – now is the time for binding rules

Columns

Government experts are meeting in Geneva, Switzerland, to work towards a possible negotiating mandate on autonomous weapons systems (AWS). These are military systems that can select and engage targets without human intervention. This major international gathering follows a recent call by the UN and the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) for urgent controls on these weapons, sometimes dubbed “killer robots” in descriptions by the media. Recent events in Ukraine have further consolidated concerns that a slide towards weapons with full autonomy (and without ...

Dear Annie: Trauma takes its toll on teacher

Columns

Dear Annie: I’ve been a teacher for 19 years. I’ve quit my job and have what I think are panic attacks when I think about going back. Throughout my career as a mandated reporter, I’ve had to call the authorities multiple times, and I’ve always been a shoulder for children who’ve been abused to cry on. I never let it interfere with my attitude. I was always able to move on and not let it get me down. However, this last year broke me. I had two second grade students who changed everything, and those rose-colored glasses I managed to keep on through 18 years of hearing ...

Fulton Sheen and me

Columns

History yields people whose influence extends far beyond their earthly lives. They become teachers to generations they never met, spiritual companions to people whose names they never knew, and reminders that faith is not merely a set of propositions to be accepted but a way of life to be embraced. For me, one of those extraordinary figures is Archbishop Fulton J. Sheen. Fulton Sheen possessed a rare gift: He could bring the richness, beauty and intellectual depth of traditional Catholicism into the homes of ordinary Americans. Through his Emmy Award-winning, half-hour weekly ...

A convoluted scheme to pay parents to stay at home

Columns

Vice President JD Vance wants to pay married parents to stay home with their children, and he wants to do it with money Congress appropriated to help low-income families afford day care. Whatever one thinks of the goal, which may prove popular, the proposal fails every test we should apply to government subsidies. That’s because the proposal corrects no market failure. It pays people for choices they’re already making. It adds a new claimant class to a budget that cannot carry the ones already promised something. And it does all of this without a workable plan to pay for ...