Archive for June 2025

As Te Mana Raraunga (the Māori Data Sovereignty Network) advocates, data is a living taonga (treasure), is of strategic value to Māori, and should be subject to Māori governance. Changes to census methods risk compromising these values – and undermining public trust in the official statistics system in general. Because the new system takes census data gathering out of the hands of individual citizens and households, it also raises questions about state surveillance and social licence.

The Social Security Administration regularly publishes anonymized benefit data to foster transparency and promote public understanding. For instance, the average Social Security benefit paid to retired workers was $1,975 in December 2024.

Today is National HIV Testing Day, which recognizes the importance of getting tested for HIV and getting linked to the HIV prevention or treatment that is right for you. Some answers to possible questions.

In the nearly two decades Sara Smith spent working at Missouri’s Department of Social Services, she remembers nine different people running the agency in charge of investigating child abuse and neglect. In March, Smith took the helm herself.

Sexual crimes increased by 3%, from 14,484 to 14,892. These crimes are now at their second-highest level since 1971.

Sri Lankan society has ‘come a long way’ in the last 20 years, with far more public support for LGBTQ+ people. Sri Lanka’s colonial-era laws echo those once seen across Asia. Many countries have repealed these laws — notably India in 2018 and Singapore in 2022 — but Sri Lanka still lags behind.

eSafety Commissioner Julie Inman Grant says the government’s laws to keep under-16s off social media are a “delay” rather than a ban.

Dr. Allen Frances, a top psychiatrist, led an update to the guidelines for diagnosing autism in 1994 that loosened the definition to include people with milder symptoms. In the 1980s, around one in 2,000 children had autism in the US…. Today, around one in 31 children have autism spectrum disorder.