SALT LAKE CITY (AP) — The Mormon church is standing behind its new rules targeting gay members and their children that generated widespread blowback from members, while providing more explanation about the policy changes and clarifying exactly what they mean.
The rules issued last week are designed to protect kids, following in the footsteps of Jesus Christ's "tender love of children," officials with The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints said in a news release Friday.
"Church leader...

The wounds of segregation were still raw in the 1970s. With only rare exceptions, African-American children had nowhere near the same educational opportunities as whites.

The civil rights movement, school desegregation and the War on Poverty helped bring a measure of equity to the playing field. Today, despite some setbacks along the way, racial disparities in education have narrowed significantly. By 2012, the test-score deficit of black 9-, 13- and 17-year-olds in reading and math had been...

WASHINGTON — Time may appear to slow down for white Americans who feel threatened by an approaching black person, raising questions about the pervasive effects of racial bias or anxiety in the United States, according to research published by the American Psychological Association.

In a series of experiments, white adults viewed faces of white and black people who appeared to be moving toward them on a computer screen. Participants rated the apparent speed or approximate time that each face ...

Ireland will move towards decriminalising substances including heroin, cocaine and cannabis as part of a “radical cultural shift”, the country's drugs minister has said.
Aodhán Ó Ríordáin, the chief of Ireland’s National Drugs Strategy, told a lecture at the London School of Economics on Monday that drug users will be able to inject in specially designated rooms in Dublin from next year.
The minister said attitudes to drugs needed to move away from shaming addicts to helping them and ...