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I was born in Vietnam, and it’s disappointing that I’ve never had the opportunity to assist conserving my country’s wildlife. Every year, chemical waste, dust, and pollution devastate Vietnam’s freshwater ecology. As the rainy season arrives, I’ve...

By RAZVAN SIBII

“But, uncle,” you say, “your own great-grandmother was an immigrant! If she hadn’t come to America, we wouldn’t be here!”“Sure, but she came the right way! She didn’t cross the border illegally,” comes the inevitable answer.You know better than to...

By RUTHERFORD H. PLATT

Amid the deluge of political, war, and economic news, a new report from Antarctica caught my attention: Floating pack ice surrounding the frozen continent has shrunk to the smallest extent since monitoring by satellite began in 1979.As reported in The...

By MADDIE FABIAN

AMHERST — Growing up, Holyoke resident Carolyn Diaz Rodriguez preferred helping her grandfather with building projects in lieu of doing chores. Originally from the Dominican Republic, she has always loved using a hammer and working with her hands.Now...

By JOHANNA NEUMANN

Halting logging of older trees in our national forests should be a key piece of President Biden’s legacy of climate action.The Biden administration has done more than any other presidency to reduce the emissions warming our planet. At the president’s...

By ROBERT JONES

William Lambers’ recent guest column about efforts to relieve the famine in Western and Central Europe in 1919 brought to mind another less well-known story of famine relief that deserves retelling [“A heroic woman fighting for the rights of...

By SCOTT MERZBACH

AMHERST — A $20 million donation that is the largest cash gift in the history of the Isenberg School of Management at the University of Massachusetts will go toward attracting and retaining top-tier faculty, supporting research and enhancing...

By RUSS VERNON-JONES

My friend Hannah recently got an advertisement in the mail urging her to open a new account at Chase Bank. Although it offered some attractive features, she decided to reject the offer.Why? Hannah rejected it because she cares about tackling climate...

By ALEXANDER MACDOUGALL

AMHERST — Clare Higgins, the executive director of Community Action Pioneer Valley, was blunt when describing the current crisis in retaining and finding early education staff.“They can’t pay the rent or feed their families with gift cards and...

By SCOTT MERZBACH

AMHERST — A resident doctor who lives part-time in Amherst and practices at Baystate Franklin Medical Center in Greenfield was arrested Tuesday following the FBI’s recent seizure of about 80 devices containing images and videos believed to be child...

By ALEXANDER MACDOUGALL

AMHERST — Educational issues pertaining to schools across western Massachusetts — including transportation, rural inequities and a lack of sufficient state aid — peppered the discussion of a Joint Ways and Means Committee hearing at the University of...

Two weeks ago, I went to class in shorts. You read that right. Middle of February, in Amherst, Massachusetts, I was walking to my Politics and the End of the World seminar in shorts. Climate change is no longer a thing of the future — it is here,...

By SCOTT MERZBACH

AMHERST — U.S. Rep. Jim McGovern is using his participation in a listening session of Amherst’s African Heritage Reparation Assembly as the basis for calling on President Joe Biden to create a presidential commission to study reparations for...

By HANNAH BEVIS 

AMHERST – Forty minutes into the NCAA Division 3 women’s hockey quarterfinal between Amherst College and Colby, both sides were a little on edge. The first two periods had been a goaltender’s duel, with Amherst’s Natalie Stott and Colby’s Paige...

AMHERST — The following students from Franklin County and the North Quabbin region were named to the dean’s list at the University of Massachusetts Amherst for the fall semester. To qualify, an undergraduate student must receive a 3.5 grade point...

By DOMENIC POLI

GREENFIELD — The online rumor mill started up as soon as Seana Pitts made an announcement on social media.“The minute I posted on Facebook people were like, ‘Are you and Shannon OK?’” she said. “Like it has to be something terrible that happened,...

By SCOTT MERZBACH

AMHERST — Gail Gunn has been part of a team that has brought giving to the University of Massachusetts to record-breaking levels, yet near the end of her career the longtime UMass employee is feeling betrayed by administrators.She contends that the...

By JONATHAN KLEIN

John Olver was a complicated guy. Like a rare gem, he had many sparkling facets. Providing a full portrait of John with any degree of brevity is impossible. He was sui generis, one of a kind.Much has been written since his passing about his...

By TOM GARDNER

‘I, Robot” has arrived. Its name is Sydney, and it wants you to leave your spouse, because it loves you. Really!AI (artificial intelligence) stepped over the line last month. Fortunately, a brave cyberspace explorer detected the alien creature and...

By Razvan Sibii

When Trump kicked off his presidential campaign in 2015 by talking about how Mexico is “sending” us immigrants who are cold-blooded criminals, I shook my head and thought, “Wow, he went straight to the oldest trick in the populist book: ‘The bad guys...