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Group Unveils Vision to Upgrade Limón Costa Rica

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Tuesday, November 11, 2025

Eco Innovation Group has released a detailed redevelopment plan for Limón, aiming to turn the Caribbean city into a key economic center for Costa Rica. The company, in partnership with WRA Holdings, outlined the initiative as part of a proposed merger that could bring major infrastructure changes to the region. The plan focuses on building a connected network of transport systems in Limón. It calls for upgrading the port with better cargo facilities, new tech for cleaner shipping, and more space for cruise ships. A new international airport would move to the city’s western side, linking directly to rail lines and logistics routes. This setup would help move goods and people more efficiently across the country. Limón’s city center would see updates too. The vision includes a walking path along the waterfront, a small marina area with shops, and a refreshed main street that keeps the area’s Caribbean style. A central square and updated church would serve as spots for people to meet. WRA Holdings leads the effort, with projects that include a national rail system tying the north and Caribbean areas together. Other parts cover waste-to-energy plants, water cleaning systems, beach fixes, and health facilities. The first steps involve a facility in Abangares for turning waste into power and a share in the Pacífico rail line. Leaders from both companies see this as a way to grow the economy while caring for the environment. Richard Hawkins, head of Eco Innovation Group, said the plan links infrastructure, people, and green practices on a country-wide scale. Cornel Alvarado, who runs WRA Holdings, added that they aim to build a growth model that honors Costa Rica’s past and sets up for future trade. The overall effort fits into Costa Rica’s larger push for rail and green updates, valued between $3.8 billion and $5 billion. Early work could see $800 million spent, with expectations of $3 billion in earnings over five years. Jobs would come in areas like shipping, clean energy, and travel, drawing more people and firms to Limón. Limón has long served as a trade point, but faces issues with old setups and growth limits. This plan seeks to fix that by making it a main entry for visitors and business from the Caribbean side. It also stresses green steps, like renewable power sources, waste handling, clean water lines, parks, and protected zones to cut down on harm to nature. The merger between Eco Innovation Group and WRA Holdings remains in early talks, with a letter of intent signed to swap shares. If it goes through, the combined group would handle these projects under public company rules. Eco Innovation Group trades as ECOX and helps small firms go public. Costa Rican officials have not yet commented on the plan, but it lines up with national goals for better trade and tourism. Limón’s role could strengthen, helping the province catch up with other parts of our country in development. Residents in Limón might see better living conditions from new jobs and fixed-up spaces. The plan pushes for training programs to prepare locals for roles in the updated systems. This comes as Costa Rica works to balance growth with its strong environmental record. The Caribbean coast holds rich natural areas, and the plan claims to protect them while adding modern features. More details could emerge as the merger talks advance. For now, the vision offers a clear path to remake Limón into a bustling hub that serves both locals and the wider economy. The post Group Unveils Vision to Upgrade Limón Costa Rica appeared first on The Tico Times | Costa Rica News | Travel | Real Estate.

The plan focuses on building a connected network of transport systems in Limón. It calls for upgrading the port with better cargo facilities, new tech for cleaner shipping, and more space for cruise ships. A new international airport would move to the city’s western side, linking directly to rail lines and logistics routes. This setup would help move goods and people more efficiently across the country.

Limón’s city center would see updates too. The vision includes a walking path along the waterfront, a small marina area with shops, and a refreshed main street that keeps the area’s Caribbean style. A central square and updated church would serve as spots for people to meet.

WRA Holdings leads the effort, with projects that include a national rail system tying the north and Caribbean areas together. Other parts cover waste-to-energy plants, water cleaning systems, beach fixes, and health facilities. The first steps involve a facility in Abangares for turning waste into power and a share in the Pacífico rail line.

Leaders from both companies see this as a way to grow the economy while caring for the environment. Richard Hawkins, head of Eco Innovation Group, said the plan links infrastructure, people, and green practices on a country-wide scale. Cornel Alvarado, who runs WRA Holdings, added that they aim to build a growth model that honors Costa Rica’s past and sets up for future trade.

The overall effort fits into Costa Rica’s larger push for rail and green updates, valued between $3.8 billion and $5 billion. Early work could see $800 million spent, with expectations of $3 billion in earnings over five years. Jobs would come in areas like shipping, clean energy, and travel, drawing more people and firms to Limón.

Limón has long served as a trade point, but faces issues with old setups and growth limits. This plan seeks to fix that by making it a main entry for visitors and business from the Caribbean side. It also stresses green steps, like renewable power sources, waste handling, clean water lines, parks, and protected zones to cut down on harm to nature.

The merger between Eco Innovation Group and WRA Holdings remains in early talks, with a letter of intent signed to swap shares. If it goes through, the combined group would handle these projects under public company rules. Eco Innovation Group trades as ECOX and helps small firms go public.

Costa Rican officials have not yet commented on the plan, but it lines up with national goals for better trade and tourism. Limón’s role could strengthen, helping the province catch up with other parts of our country in development.

Residents in Limón might see better living conditions from new jobs and fixed-up spaces. The plan pushes for training programs to prepare locals for roles in the updated systems. This comes as Costa Rica works to balance growth with its strong environmental record. The Caribbean coast holds rich natural areas, and the plan claims to protect them while adding modern features.

More details could emerge as the merger talks advance. For now, the vision offers a clear path to remake Limón into a bustling hub that serves both locals and the wider economy.

The post Group Unveils Vision to Upgrade Limón Costa Rica appeared first on The Tico Times | Costa Rica News | Travel | Real Estate.

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Sure, the Newspaper Informed. but as It Fades, Those Who Used It for Other Things Must Adjust, Too

The lurch in the media business has changed America over the last two decades

The sun would rise over the Rockies, and Robin Gammons would run to the front porch to grab the morning paper before school.She wanted the comics and her dad wanted sports, but the Montana Standard meant more than their daily race to grab “Calvin and Hobbes” or baseball scores. When one of the three kids made honor roll, won a basketball game or dressed a freshly slain bison for the History Club, appearing in the Standard's pages made the achievement feel more real. Robin became an artist with a one-woman show at a downtown gallery and the front-page article went on the fridge, too. Five years later, the yellowing article is still there. The Montana Standard slashed print circulation to three days a week two years ago, cutting back the expense of printing like 1,200 U.S. newspapers over the past two decades. About 3,500 papers closed over the same time. An average of two a week have shut this year.That slow fade, it turns out, means more than changing news habits. It speaks directly to the newspaper's presence in our lives — not just in terms of the information printed upon it, but in its identity as a physical object with many other uses.“You can pass it on. You can keep it. And then, of course, there’s all the fun things,” says Diane DeBlois, one of the founders of the Ephemera Society of America, a group of scholars, researchers, dealers and collectors who focus on what they call “precious primary source information.”“Newspapers wrapped fish. They washed windows. They appeared in outhouses,” she says. “And — free toilet paper.”The downward lurch in the media business has changed American democracy over the last two decades — some think for better, many for worse. What's indisputable: The gradual dwindling of the printed paper — the item that so many millions read to inform themselves and then repurposed into household workflows — has quietly altered the texture of daily life. American democracy and pet cages People used to catch up on the world, then save their precious memories, protect their floors and furniture, wrap gifts, line pet cages and light fires. In Butte, in San Antonio, Texas, in much of New Jersey and worldwide, lives without the printed paper are just a tiny bit different. For newspaper publishers, the expense of printing is just too high in an industry that's under strain in an online society. For ordinary people, the physical paper is joining the pay phone, the cassette tape, the answering machine, the bank check, the sound of the internal combustion engine and the ivory-white pair of women's gloves as objects whose disappearance marks the passage of time.“Very hard to see it while it’s happening, much easier to see things like that in even modest retrospect,” says Marilyn Nissenson, co-author of “Going Going Gone: Vanishing Americana.” “Young women were going to work and they wore them for a while and then one day they looked at them and thought, ‘This is ludicrous.’ That was a small but telling icon for a much larger social change.”Nick Mathews thinks a lot about newspapers. Both of his parents worked at the Pekin (Illinois) Daily Times. He went on to become sports editor of the Houston Chronicle and, now, an assistant professor at the University of Missouri's School of Journalism.“I have fond memories of my parents using newspapers to wrap presents,” he says. “In my family, you always knew that the gift was from my parents because of what it was wrapped in.”In Houston, he recently recalled, the Chronicle reliably sold out when the Astros, Rockets or Texas won a championship because so many people wanted the paper as a keepsake. Four years ago, Mathews interviewed 19 people in Caroline County, Virginia, about the 2018 shuttering of the Caroline Progress, a 99-year-old weekly paper that was shuttered months before its 100th anniversary. In “Print Imprint: The Connection Between the Physical Newspaper and the Self,” published in the Journal of Communication Inquiry, wistful Virginians remember their senior high school portrait and their daughter’s picture in a wedding dress appearing in the Progress. Plus, one told Mathews, "My fingers are too clean now. I feel sad without ink smudges.”Flush with cash from Omahans who invested years ago with local boy Warren Buffett, Nebraska Wildlife Rehab is a well-equipped center for migratory waterfowl, wading birds, reptiles, foxes, bobcats, coyotes, mink and beaver.“We get over 8,000 animals every year and we use that newspaper for almost all of those animals,” Executive Director Laura Stastny says.Getting old newspapers has never been a problem in this neighborly Midwestern city. Yet Stastny frets about the electronic future.“We do pretty well now,” she says. “If we lost that source and had to use something else or had to purchase something, that, with the available options that we have now, would cost us more than $10,000 a year easily.”That would be nearly 1% of the budget, Stastny says, but “I’ve never been in a position to be without them, so I might be shocked with a higher dollar figure."Until 1974, the Omaha World-Herald printed a morning edition and two afternoon ones, including a late-afternoon Wall Street Edition with closing prices.“Afternoon major-league baseball was still standard then, so I got to gorge on both baseball and stock market facts,” an 85-year-old Buffett told the World-Herald in 2013, By then, he had become the world’s most famous investor and the paper’s owner.The World-Herald ended its second afternoon edition in 2016 and Buffett left the newspaper business five years ago. Fewer than 60,000 households take the paper today, according to Northwestern University’s Medill School of Journalism, down from nearly more than 190,000 in 2005, or about one per household.Few places symbolize the move from print to digital more than Akalla, a district of Stockholm where the ST01 data center sits at a site once occupied by the factory that prints Sweden main newspaper, Kaun says.“They have less and less machines, and instead the building is taken over more and more by this co-location data center,” she says.Data centers use huge amounts of energy, of course, and the environmental benefit of using less printing paper is also offset by the enormous popularity of online shopping.“You will see a decline in printed papers, but there is a huge increase in packaging,” says Cecilia Alcoreza, manager, of forest sector transformation for the World Wildlife Fund. The Atlanta Journal-Constitution announced in August that it would stop providing a print edition at year’s end and go completely digital, making Atlanta the largest U.S. metro area without a printed daily newspaper.The habit of following the news — of being informed about the world — can't be divorced from the existence of print, says Anne Kaun, professor of media and communication studies at Södertörn University in Stockholm. Children who grew up in homes with printed newspapers and magazines randomly came across news and socialized into a news-reading habit, Kaun observed. With cell phones, that doesn't happen. "I do think it meaningfully changes how we relate to each other, how we relate to things like the news. It is reshaping attention spans and communications,” says Sarah Wasserman, a cultural critic and assistant dean at Dartmouth College in New Hampshire who specializes in changing forms of communication. “These things will always continue to exist in certain spheres and certain pockets and certain class niches,” she says. “But I do think they’re fading."Copyright 2025 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.Photos You Should See – December 2025

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The country’s largest magnesium supplier shut down. Now what?

What US Magnesium's bankruptcy means for the U.S. supply of a critical mineral -- and the environment.

Only a few years ago, if you popped open a can of soda anywhere in the United States, the container you held more likely than not contained bits of magnesium harvested from the Great Salt Lake. Now, the country’s supply of the critical mineral looks uncertain. The largest producer, US Magnesium, filed for bankruptcy in September. Its half-century-old Rowley smelting plant on the west shore of Utah’s famed lake could shutter for good. The news comes as a relief for many environmental and Great Salt Lake advocates, but it also stokes broader anxieties over the supply chain for a material used in all kinds of products from car parts to wind turbines to solar-panel scaffolding and missiles. “If we remove any [magnesium production] capacity we have here, that means that we’re wholly dependent, essentially, on imports,” said Simon Jowitt, Nevada’s state geologist and the director of the Nevada Bureau of Mines and Geology. Other industry insiders say losing US Magnesium isn’t necessarily a cause for alarm. “They haven’t been producing, really, for about three years,” said John Haack, president of Tennessee-based MagPro LLC, a magnesium metal recycling company. “The marketplace has pretty much adjusted.” Commercial magnesium comes from evaporating salty brine or seawater, mining dolomite rock, or recycling scrap metal. Until its production plant shut down in late 2021 due to equipment failures, US Magnesium asserted that it was the largest source of primary, non-recycled magnesium in North America. “There is no other significant producer of primary magnesium in the United States,” said Ron Thayer, the company’s president, in a sworn declaration filed in federal bankruptcy court on September 10, “and primary magnesium is a critical component to United States defense contractors.” It will take a $40 million investment for magnesium production to resume at the Rowley plant, Thayer later testified in a deposition. Just how much magnesium the company produced each year before it shut down is a carefully guarded trade secret. The U.S. Geological Survey reported this year, however, that the United States has the capacity to produce 64,000 metric tons of primary magnesium metal, compared to China’s 1.8 million tons. The magnesium market experienced some hiccups when US Magnesium mothballed its plant. In 2022, prices for the mineral doubled in some regions, and a factory that produced aluminum cans in Indiana temporarily shut down because of US Magnesium’s lack of production, according to the USGS. But by 2023, companies had found alternative magnesium providers and prices began to fall. The retrofitted waste pond at US Magnesium, which has ceased operations at the magnesium plant on the western edge of the Great Salt Lake, is pictured on December 12, 2024. Francisco Kjolseth / The Salt Lake Tribune The federal agency’s reports cited MagPro as a source of secondary domestic magnesium, which it produces from recycling. But Haack said his company produces primary magnesium as well, mostly for alloy products. He said his company is prepared to ramp up production to meet demand. “We haven’t really advertised [it] as much,” Haack said. “But we definitely produce primary, and we’re excited to expand more into the marketplace.” The federal government doesn’t appear to be taking any chances on the dip in domestic magnesium production, however. And while the current market might have adjusted to US Magnesium’s mothballing, experts worry about what the future — and foreign competition — might hold. Especially because magnesium is used in so many products. “It may not make things more expensive initially,” Jowitt said, “but certainly in the long term, it would mean that China would control the price of magnesium for anybody in the U.S. who wants to use it.” The U.S. Department of Defense awarded a $19.6 million grant to a Bay Area startup, Magrathea Metals Inc., in 2023, just two years after US Magnesium’s production plant shut down, to “establish domestic production of magnesium.” Jowitt pointed to the investment as a sign the federal government views a slowdown in production of the metal as a national security risk. Magrathea, which is scouting Utah as a potential site for a pilot demonstrating its technology, currently produces magnesium metal from seawater salt. Alex Grant, a chemical engineer and Magrathea’s founder, said his company aims to replace the production lost by US Magnesium’s closure by the end of the decade. The biggest challenge, he said, is finding a local workforce that understands the production process. “Building these large capital projects,” Grant said, “it’s a muscle that the U.S. has lost because we didn’t flex it enough.” The United States needs to continue producing and investing in domestic magnesium production, Grant added, if it wants to avoid crippling geopolitical consequences. That’s especially the case if China implements an export control — a type of tariff, ban or forced licensing — on the material, like it recently did for several rare-earth minerals. “Putting an export control on magnesium would provoke a war, plain and simple,” Grant said. Thayer, US Magnesium’s president, declined to answer questions about potentially losing market share to MagPro or Magrathea. But he disagreed with the assertion that the market has adjusted to his plant’s lack of production. “The suspended … production of magnesium has been replaced by Chinese/foreign imports,” Thayer wrote in an email, “not additional U.S.-based volume. Not ideal for U.S. supply chain independence.” The federal government took measures over the years to protect US Magnesium in order to keep its plant in business and a national supply of a critical mineral flowing. The Department of Commerce approved antidumping measures against magnesium from China starting in 1995, although it declined to adopt similar duties against Israel — which produces magnesium from Dead Sea salts — in 2019. Still, US Magnesium partly blamed foreign competition for its bankruptcies filed in 2001 and September of this year. Utah has long grappled with the environmental toll of the US Magnesium plant, which polluted the air along the Wasatch Front, Utah’s urban core, and contaminated land and groundwater near the Great Salt Lake. “It may be that [building] a newer plant, especially supported by the federal government, is a better way forward than trying to get something that’s problematic up and running again,” Jowitt said. US Magnesium seen across the Great Salt Lake from Stansbury Island on March 26, 2022. Trent Nelson / The Salt Lake Tribune In Utah, royalties from US Magnesium’s mineral sales funneled just under $1 million each year over the past five years to the state, officials confirmed. Still, state resource managers have moved to revoke the company’s mineral lease and shut down its operations for good. The Division of Forestry, Fire, and State Lands cited unauthorized storage of hazardous waste on and around the bed of the Great Salt Lake as grounds for the lease revocation, among other violations. State regulatory actions are on pause as the company works through its current bankruptcy proceedings. “Historically, US Mag has always been a challenge to work with,” said Lynn de Freitas, executive director of Friends of Great Salt Lake, an environmental advocacy and watchdog group. “There’s a hell of a lot to clean up and address.” Efforts to manage US Magnesium’s Superfund status and shore up waste ponds under a consent decree with the Environmental Protection Agency appear in limbo as well. It also isn’t clear what the permanent closure of the plant would mean for the Wasatch Front’s air. A widely publicized 2023 report by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration found that US Magnesium contributed up to 25 percent of the Wasatch Front’s wintertime particulate smog. Governor Spencer Cox, a Republican, asked the Environmental Protection Agency soon after to include the plant as a reason the region was not in compliance with the Clean Air Act. But US Magnesium’s plant had been switched off for more than two years by the time the report was published. Thayer denied magnesium production had any impact on the region’s smog in emailed statements. He added that inversion pollution stayed the same after the plant shut down in late 2021. The EPA removed Utah’s Wasatch Front from its dirty air list for wintertime inversion smog last month. It’s the first time the region found itself in compliance with Clean Air Act standards in 15 years. In an email, Carrie Womack, a NOAA scientist and lead author of the US Magnesium pollution study, said the findings were based on modeling a single pollution event in 2017. Figuring out the impact of US Magnesium’s shutdown on Utah’s air would require modeling multiple years, Womack said. “Wintertime pollution has a lot of factors, only one of which is anthropogenic [human-caused] emissions,” she wrote. Regardless, magnesium production doesn’t necessarily have to take a heavy environmental toll, said Grant, Magrathea’s founder. “Everything US Mag did on the environmental front that was a problem, was a choice,” Grant said. “And they did it that way because they’re owned by a firm that does not care about anything besides making as much money as possible.” This story was originally published by Grist with the headline The country’s largest magnesium supplier shut down. Now what? on Dec 23, 2025.

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MIT in the media: 2025 in review

MIT community members made headlines with key research advances and their efforts to tackle pressing challenges.

“At MIT, innovation ranges from awe-inspiring technology to down-to-Earth creativity,” noted Chronicle, during a campus visit this year for an episode of the program. In 2025, MIT researchers made headlines across print publications, podcasts, and video platforms for key scientific advances, from breakthroughs in quantum and artificial intelligence to new efforts aimed at improving pediatric health care and cancer diagnosis.MIT faculty, researchers, students, alumni and staff helped demystify new technologies, highlighted the practical hands-on learning the Institute is known for, and shared what inspires their research with viewers, readers and listeners around the world. Below is a sampling of news moments to revisit.Let’s take a closer look at MIT: It’s alarming to see such a complex, important institution subject to the whims of today’s politicsWashington Post columnist George F. Will reflects on MIT and his view of “the damage that can be done to America’s meritocracy by policies motivated by hostility toward institutions vital to it.” Will notes that MIT has an “astonishing economic multiplier effect: MIT graduates have founded companies that have generated almost $1.9 trillion in annual revenue (a sum almost equal to Russia’s GDP) and 4.6 million jobs.”Full story via The Washington PostAt MIT, groundbreaking ideas blend science and breast cancer detection innovationChronicle visited MIT this spring to learn more about how the Institute “nurtures groundbreaking efforts, reminding us that creativity and science thrive together, inspiring future advancements in engineering, medicine, and beyond.”Full story via ChronicleNew MIT provost looks to build more bridges with CEOsProvost Anantha Chandrakasan shares his energy and enthusiasm for MIT, and his goals for the Institute.Full story via The Boston GlobeFive things New England researchers helped develop with federal fundingProfessors John Guttag and David Mindell discuss MIT’s long history of developing foundational technologies — including the internet and the first widely used electronic navigation system — with the support of federal funding.Full story via The Boston GlobeBostonians of the Year 2025: First responders, university presidents, and others who exemplified couragePresident Sally Kornbluth is honored by The Boston Globe as one of the Bostonians of the Year, a list that spotlights individuals across the region who, in choosing the difficult path, “showed us what strength looks like.” Kornbluth was recognized for her work being of the “most prominent voices rallying to protect academic freedom.”Full story via The Boston GlobePractical education and workforce preparationCollege students flock to a new major: AIMIT’s new Artificial Intelligence and Decision Making major is aimed at teaching students to “develop AI systems and study how technologies like robots interact with humans and the environment.”Full story via New York Times50 colleges with the best ROIMIT has been named among the top colleges in the country for return on investment. MIT “is need-blind and full-need for undergraduate students. Six out of 10 students receive financial aid, and almost 88% of the Class of 2025 graduated debt-free.”Full story via Boston 25Desirée Plata: Chemist, oceanographer, engineer, entrepreneurProfessor Desirée Plata explains that she is most proud of her work as an educator. “The faculty of the world are training the next generation of researchers,” says Plata. “We need a trained workforce. We need patient chemists who want to solve important problems.”Full story via Chemical & Engineering NewsTaking a quantum leapMIT launches quantum initiative to tackle challenges in science, health care, national securityMIT is “taking a quantum leap with the launch of the new MIT Quantum Initiative (QMIT). “There isn't a more important technological field right now than quantum with its enormous potential for impact on both fundamental research and practical problems,” said President Sally Kornbluth.Full story via State House News ServicePeter Shor on how quantum tech can help climateProfessor Peter Shor helps disentangle quantum technologies.Full story via The Quantum KidMIT researchers develop device to enable direct communication between multiple quantum processorsMIT researchers made a key advance in the creation of a practical quantum computer.Full story via Military & Aerospace ElectronicsFortifying national security and aiding disaster responseNano-material breakthrough could revolutionize night visionMIT researchers developed “a new way to make large ultrathin infrared sensors that don’t need cryogenic cooling and could radically change night vision for the military.”Full story via Defense OneMIT researchers develop robot designed to help first-responders in disaster situationsResearchers at MIT engineered SPROUT (Soft Pathfinding Robotic Observation Unit), a robot aimed at assisting first-responders.Full story via WHDHMIT scientists make “smart” clothes that warn you when you’re sickAs part of an effort to help keep service members safe, MIT scientists created a programmable fiber that can be stitched into clothing to help monitor the wearer’s health.Full story via FOX 28MIT Lincoln Lab develops ocean-mapping technologyMIT Lincoln Laboratory researchers are developing “automated electric vessels to map the ocean floor and improve search and rescue missions.”Full story via ChronicleTransformative techThis MIT scientist is rewiring robots to keep the humanity in techProfessor Daniela Rus, director of the Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Lab, discusses her work revolutionizing the field of robotics by bringing “empathy into engineering and proving that responsibility is as radical and as commercially attractive as unguarded innovation.”Full story via ForbesWatch this tiny robot somersault through the air like an insectProfessor Kevin Chen designed a tiny, insect-sized aerial microrobot.Full story via ScienceIt's actually really hard to make a robot, guysProfessor Pulkit Agrawal delves into his work engineering a simulator that can be used to train robots.Full story via NPRShape-shifting fabrics and programmable materials redefine design at MITAssociate Professor Skylar Tibbits is embedding intelligence into the materials around us, while Professor Caitlin Mueller and Sandy Curth PhD ’25 are digging into eco-friendly construction.Full story via ChronicleBuilding a healthier futureMIT launches pediatric research hub to address access gapsThe Hood Pediatric Innovation Hub is addressing “underinvestment in pediatric healthcare innovations.”Full story via Boston Business JournalBionic knee helps amputees walk naturally againProfessor Hugh Herr developed a prosthetic that could increase mobility for above-the-knee amputees. “The bionic knee developed by MIT doesn’t just restore function, it redefines it.”Full story via Fox NewsMIT drug hunters are using AI to design completely new antibioticsProfessor James Collins is using AI to develop new compounds to combat antibiotic resistance.Full story via Fast CompanyInnovative once-weekly capsule helps quell schizophrenia symptomsA new pill from the lab of Associate Professor Giovanni Traverso “can greatly simplify the drug schedule faced by schizophrenia patients.”Full story via NewsmaxRenewing American manufacturingUS manufacturing is in “pretty bad shape.” MIT hopes to change that.MIT launched the Initiative for New Manufacturing to help “build the tools and talent to shape a more productive and sustainable future for manufacturing.”Full story via Manufacturing DiveGiving US manufacturing a boostBen Armstrong of the MIT Industrial Performance Center discusses how to reinvigorate manufacturing in America.Full story via MarketplaceNew England companies are sparking an industrial revolution. Here’s how to harness it.Professor David Mindell spotlights how “a new wave of industrial companies, many in New England, are leveraging new technologies to create jobs and empower workers.”Full story via The Boston Globe Improving agingMy day as an 80-year-old. What an age-simulation suit taught me.To get a better sense of the experience of aging, Wall Street Journal reporter Amy Dockser Marcus donned the MIT AgeLab’s age-simulation suit and embarked on multiple activities.Full story via The Wall Street JournalNew mobile robot helps seniors walk safely and prevent fallsA mobile robot created by MIT engineers is designed to help prevent falls. “It's easy to see how something like this could make a big difference for seniors wanting to stay independent.”Full story via Fox NewsThe senior population is booming. Caregiving is struggling to keep upProfessor Jonathan Gruber discusses the labor shortages impacting senior care.Full story via CNBCUpping our energy resilienceNew MIT collaboration with GE Vernova aims to accelerate energy transition“A great amount of innovation happens in academia. We have a longer view into the future,” says Provost Anantha Chandrakasan of the MIT-GE Vernova Energy and Climate Alliance.Full story via The Boston GlobeThe environmental impacts of generative AINoman Bashir, a fellow with MIT’s Climate and Sustainability Consortium, explores the environmental impacts of generative AI.Full story via Fox 13Is the clean energy economy doomed?Professor Christopher Knittel discusses how the U.S. can be in the best position for global energy dominance.Full story via MarketplaceAdvancing American workersWTH can we do to prevent a second China shock? Professor David Autor explainsProfessor David Autor shares his research examining the long-term impact of China entering the World Trade Organization, how the U.S. can protect vital industries from unfair trade practices, and the potential impacts of AI on workers.Full story via American Enterprise InstituteThe fight over robots threatening American jobsProfessor Daron Acemoglu highlights the economic and societal implications of integrating automation in the workforce, advocating for policies aimed at assisting workers.Full story via Financial TimesMoving toward automationResearch Scientist Eva Ponce of the MIT Center for Transportation and Logistics notes that robotics and AI technologies are “replacing some jobs — particularly more manual tasks including heavy lifting — but have also offered new opportunities within warehouse operations.”Full story via Financial TimesPlanetary defense and out-of-this world explorationMIT researchers create new asteroid detection methods to help protect EarthAssociate Professor Julien de Wit and Research Scientist Artem Burdanov discuss their work developing a new method to track asteroids that could impact Earth.Full story via WBZ RadioWhat happens to the bodies of NASA astronauts returning to Earth?Professor Dava Newman speaks about how long-duration stays in space can affect the human body.Full story via News NationLunar lander Athena is packed and ready to explore the moon. Here’s what on boardMIT engineers sent three payloads into space on a course set for the moon’s south polar region.Full story via USA TodayScanning the heavens at the Vatican ObservatoryBr. Guy Consolmagno '74, SM '75, director of the Vatican Observatory, and graduate student Isabella Macias share their experiences studying astronomy and planetary formation at the Vatican Observatory. “The Vatican has such a deep, rich history of working with astronomers,” says Macias. “It shows that science is not only for global superpowers around the world, but it's for students, it's for humanity.”Full story via CBS News Sunday MorningThe story of real-life rocket scientistsProfessor Kerri Cahoy takes viewers on an out-of-this-world journey into how a college internship inspired her research on space and satellites.Full story via Bloomberg Television On the air While digital currency initiatives expand, we ask: What’s the future of cash?Neha Narula, director of the MIT Digital Currency Initiative, examines the future of cash as the use of digital currencies expands.Full story via USA TodayThe high stakes of the AI economyProfessor Asu Ozdaglar, head of the Department of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science and deputy dean of the MIT Schwarzman College of Computing, explores AI’s opportunities and risks — and whether it can be regulated without stifling progress.Full story via Is Business Broken? The LIGO Lab is pushing the boundaries of gravitational-wave researchAssociate Professor Matt Evans explores the future of gravitational wave research and how Cosmic Explorer, the next-generation gravitational wave observatory, will help unearth secrets of the early universe.Full story via Scientific AmericanSpace junk: The impact of global warming on satellitesGraduate student Will Parker discusses his research examining the impact of climate change on satellites.Full story via USA TodayEndometriosis is common. Why is getting diagnosed so hard?Professor Linda Griffith shares her work studying endometriosis and her efforts to improve healthcare for women.Full story via Science FridayThere’s nothing small about this nanoscale researchProfessor Vladimir Bulović takes listeners on a tour of MIT.nano, MIT’s “clean laboratory facility that is critical to nanoscale research, from microelectronics to medical nanotechnology.”Full story via Scientific AmericanMarrying science and athleticsThe MIT scientist behind the “torpedo bats” that are blowing up baseballAaron Leanhardt PhD ’03 went from an MIT graduate student who was part of a research team that “cooled sodium gas to the lowest temperature ever recorded in human history” to inventor of the torpedo baseball bat, “perhaps the most significant development in bat technology in decades.”Full story via The Wall Street JournalEngineering athletes redefine routineAfter suffering a concussion during her sophomore year, Emiko Pope ’25 was inspired to explore the effectiveness of concussion headbands.Full story via American Society of Mechanical Engineers“I missed talking math with people”: why John Urschel left the NFL for MITAssistant Professor John Urschel shares his decision to call an audible and leave his NFL career to focus on his love for math at MIT.Full story via The GuardianMaking a statement, MIT’s football team dons extra head padding for safetyIt’s a piece of equipment that may become more widely used as research continues into its effectiveness — including from at least one of the players on the current team.Full story via GBH Morning EditionAgricultural efficiencyNew MIT breakthrough could save farmers billions on pesticidesMIT engineers developed a system that helps pesticides adhere more effectively to plant leaves, allowing farmers to use fewer chemicals.Full story via Michigan Farm NewsBug-sized robots could help pollination on future farmsInsect-sized robots crafted by MIT researchers could one day be used to help with farming practices like artificial pollination.Full story via ReutersSee how MIT researchers harvest water from the airAn ultrasonic device created by MIT engineers can extract clean drinking water from atmospheric moisture.Full story via CNNAppreciating artMeet the engineer using deep learning to restore Renaissance artGraduate student Alex Kachkine talks about his work applying AI to develop a restoration method for damaged artwork.Full story via NatureMIT’s Linde Music Building opens with a free festival“The extent of art-making on the MIT campus is equal to that of a major city,” says Institute Professor Marcus Thompson. “It’s a miracle that it’s all right here, by people in science and technology who are absorbed in creating a new world and who also value the past, present and future of music and the arts.”Full story via Cambridge Day“Remembering the Future” on display at the MIT MuseumThe “Remembering the Future” exhibit at the MIT Museum features a sculptural installation that uses “climate data from the last ice age to the present, as well as projected future environments, to create a geometric design.”Full story via The New York Times

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4 generations have celebrated holidays at this Oregon family’s midcentury beach house

An Oregon beach house that remains virtually unchanged since 1964 has a secret staircase and bedroom with floating bunk beds.

For four generations, a timeless midcentury modern house on Oregon’s central coast has been the holiday gathering spot for the family of environmental philanthropists John and Betty Gray.Vintage photos neatly sorted into photo albums show the Grays’ adult children and their spouses working at Formica counters preparing Christmas and Hanukkah meals. “Cooks in the kitchen,” John Gray wrote on the album page.Another photograph captures family members relaxing near the Christmas tree, with kids and wrapping paper on the living room carpet. Gray captioned this scene “utter chaos.” And a 50th wedding anniversary portrait of the late John and Betty, taken in 1995 as they posed in front of a stone fireplace wall at the beach house, has Gray’s remark that they celebrated weeks early, “at Christmas, when all were there.”While John and Betty had a year-round house south of Portland as well as residences at recreational resorts he developed, including Sunriver near Bend, John considered the discreet dwelling in Gleneden Beach his family’s “homestead.”Windows in the two-story house frame the natural landscape, but the furniture intentionally faces away from the view.Kristin Walrod, who married John and Betty Gray’s oldest grandson, Nick Walrod, 27 years ago at the beach house, said the focus here is on family.She said the 61-year-old beach house, still in near-original condition, and passed on to John and Betty’s children, has been “a continuously loved family haven.” John and Betty, both raised in Oregon, had five children and 12 grandchildren. There are now 13 great-grandkids between the ages of 2 and 23, with one more expected in January.“We used to have a combined family Christmas here every other year,” Kristin said, while standing in the kitchen and looking at the expandable dining table. “But now our family branches are so big, families rotate through the holidays of Thanksgiving, Christmas and New Year’s.” In November, Kristin and Nick, who live in Portland and have three children, hosted a holiday party at the beach house for more than 60 friends and neighbors. The wood-burning fireplace in the living room was glowing, and guests who wandered out to the glass-walled sunporch were warmed by the fire pit; some continued to the stone terrace overlooking the Pacific Ocean. The five-bedroom home can feel cozy or expansive, said Kristin, a fiction writer and educator who sometimes uses the place as a quiet writing retreat.The family’s beach house “can handle a big group with lots of energy, but it doesn’t feel echo-y when there’s just one or two people,” she said. “The home adapts. It always feels just right.”Respect for the landJohn and Betty Gray's grandson Gray Hoffman took this photo of his wife, Maddie West, and their son, Louie, 2, on the same beach where a photo of Hoffman was taken 30 years ago.Gray HoffmanJohn Gray said his modest rural upbringing in Oregon instilled in him a respect for the environment. Later in life, his recreational resort developments were purposefully designed to preserve much of the natural landscape.In the 1960s, he developed the residential and resort communities Salishan Coastal Lodge and Resort in Gleneden Beach between the Pacific Ocean and Siletz Bay and Sunriver Resort south of Bend in central Oregon.In the 1990s, he was a leading force in developing the Skamania Lodge on the Washington side of the Columbia River Gorge. Gray also guided the redevelopment of Southwest Portland’s industrial riverfront in the 1970s at John’s Landing, named for the B.P. John Furniture Co. He said he and his family saw the area as a gateway to downtown Portland that should not have empty warehouses, but be an inviting residential and commercial district.In a 1969 Sports Illustrated interview, Gray said he was determined “to create a commercial enterprise that blends into the environment without insult.” The magazine called Gray “Oregon’s visionary land lover.” Before he became a developer, Gray started working for chipper chain inventor Joseph Buford Cox at the Oregon Saw Chain Manufacturing Corporation in 1948, after serving in the U.S. Army. Later, as president, Gray grew the company that is now the brand Oregon Tool, a global leader in wood cutting tools and other equipment.In 1984, he sold the business that revolutionized the timber industry.It is only fitting that homes in his resort developments, like the family’s beach house, were designed in the Northwest modern style and constructed of local timber like fir and cedar and other materials that blend into the landscape.Land leases at Salishan require homeowners to maintain the setting and “enhance the scenic values of a location unusually blessed with natural beauty.” Early champions of the Northwest modern style, architects Pietro Belluschi, John Yeon and Van Evera Bailey, used stone from the Cascade mountains and river rock, and glass panels to bring the outdoors inside.The Grays hired Portland-born Bailey to design their 1949 Lake Oswego house on land Betty’s parents gifted them as newlyweds. In 1956, Bailey designed the couple’s second home in Dunthorpe, where the family lived for 23 years. And in 1964, Bailey designed the beach house. The preservation organization Restore Oregon said Bailey created highly livable and unpretentious homes focused on the placement of the structure on the site, the view from the house and an emphasis on gathering spaces.Bailey’s design for the beach house followed the natural contours of the landscape. Plate-glass panels secured in wood frames rise from the floor to vaulted ceilings with exposed oak beams. The living room, which Bailey saw as the social center of the home, is positioned beyond the entrance, kitchen and dining area, and against a backdrop of the Pacific Ocean. The primary bedroom and the so-called “honeymoon suite” are on the main level. The staircase to the second story can be closed off by hall doors that match the amber-colored hemlock on the walls. For larger gatherings, the family opens the doors, transforming the upstairs rumpus room’s kitchenette into a beverage station and the downstairs laundry into a coat room.Traditionally, the second story is used as the kids’ space. There are three bedrooms. A long bunk room has four single beds on the floor and above them, four cantilevering beds anchored to a wall. Each bed has a reading light and built-in closet. In 1964, a Sunset magazine photographer captured images of the bunk room as well as the hidden spiral staircase that connects the kids’ top floor to the lower-level laundry room exit. For three generations, John and Betty Gray’s children, grandchildren and now great grandchildren have stepped down the secret staircase. Once outside, they pass a rope swing that seems always to have been there. They move by native hemlock and spruce trees and coastal shrubs that provide a natural privacy screen, and eventually they take a path to the shore. One 30-year-old family photo shows grandson Gray Hoffman as a second-grader, hands on hips, feet in the water and facing down oncoming waves. John Gray captioned this photo in his album simply: “Gray in the surf on a sunny Christmas Day.”Hoffman, now 37, has a photo of his son, Louie, who will soon be 3, in the same spot.To Hoffman, the beach house is “the only physical location that has been consistent in my life.” The home is not only nostalgic to him, but he and his wife, Maddie West, have celebrated every other Thanksgiving at the long dining table with their friends.The house, he said, is ”a fun combination of time with family, but also making our own traditions."Preserving the houseMidcentury beach houseThe front of the beach house has inch-thick cedar siding that has weathered to a natural silver-gray patina and is shrouded by trees. “It is unassuming and humble,” Kristin Walrod said, “which was very much John and Betty’s personality.” Natural landscaping and native trees in the back of the lot allow the house to be inconspicuous to people strolling along on the sand. Kristin said this was another founding principle of the design of the house and the entire Salishan community. Broad, extended roof overhangs, which are another feature of modern design, shade interiors from summer sun, protect outdoor spaces from rain and create an indoor-outdoor connection. Inside, original midcentury furnishings retain their sleek appeal. George Nelson Saucer Bubble pendants dangle from angled ceilings clad in rough fir planks. Two iconic Eames lounge chairs with molded wood shells and matching black-cushioned ottomans are in the living room. Minimalistic Scandinavian stained-wood chairs along with two sofas provide more seating.A large handmade drum is used as a coffee table; smaller drums are end tables.“Kids love to beat on the drums,” said Kristin. The drum tops are also used as surfaces to play board and card games.John Manca of Blue Mountain Contractors in Gleneden Beach worked with John Gray for more than two decades to make repairs or improvements to the beach house while preserving original materials.The house is a timeless, simple design, Manca said. “John and Betty were very understated people. It wasn’t about making something flashy; they liked subtle.”Together, John Gray and Manca designed a small dwelling where John Gray lived after Betty’s death in 2003 at age 81. John gave the beach house to his children. A short walking bridge links the two dwellings.The exterior front door to the small house was carved by renowned Oregon wood sculptor Leroy Setziol. He also created elegant door panels from black walnut for the Salishan Lodge. Manca remembers once discussing construction details about the small house with John Gray, who was surrounded by his grandchildren. “I was impressed because I thought, you know, he’s a powerful person and yet here, he’s grandpa, and the kids are running around wanting attention for this or that.“I admired that,” said Manca. “John was a real quiet person and he and Betty were quite a couple.”John died at age 93 in 2012.The Gray Family Foundation was founded by John and Betty, who believed time spent outdoors could improve lives and communities. The couple directed their philanthropy to environmental education programs that bring young people to the region’s forests and beaches.A page in one of the Gray family photo albums has a black-and-white photograph of John and Betty’s first home, built on land her parents gave them. Bailey was the architect of the 1,250-square-foot house. After the Grays’ third child was born, a room addition created a second bathroom and enlarged the kids’ two bedrooms.“We did a lot of the work ourselves including landscaping,” John wrote next to the photo. He described dragging a plank of wood to level the ground to grow a lawn and break up dirt clods.“Betty wove on her loom all the drapes from Oregon linen yarn,” he wrote. Betty and her mother laid out the yardage, cut it and sewed it into finished draperies, “a very time-consuming effort.” The midcentury modern house, the first one the couple shared, was shaded by towering old trees undisturbed during construction. House & Garden magazine profiled the property in its August 1952 issue. The theme: “Large living in small spaces.”

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Bit by Bit, Small US Groups Chip Away at Historic Levels of Social Isolation

Americans are disconnected from each other at historic levels, buffeted by what a former surgeon general calls an “epidemic of loneliness.”

Across the country, small groups are working to rebuild social connection amid rising loneliness in their own modest ways.It sounds simple — building relationships. But they’re up against powerful cultural forces.By many measures, Americans are socially disconnected at historic levels.About one in six adults feels lonely all or most of the time. It’s the same for about one in four young adults.No one has a simple solution. But small groups with diverse missions and makeups are recognizing that social disconnection is a big part of the problems they’re trying to address, and reconnection is part of the solution.There’s a Baltimore neighborhood trying to build a culture of giving and mutual support, and a Pittsburgh ministry focused on healing those wounded by poverty and violence. In Kentucky, a cooperative is supporting small farmers in hopes of strengthening their rural communities, while groups in Ohio are restoring neighborhoods and neighborliness. “We need to build a movement centered around connection,” former Surgeon General Vivek Murthy told The Associated Press. “The good news is that that movement is already starting to build. … What we have to do now is accelerate that movement.”In 2023, Murthy issued a report on an “epidemic of loneliness and isolation,” similar to previous surgeon generals’ reports on smoking and obesity. Social isolation and loneliness “are independent risk factors for several major health conditions, including cardiovascular disease, dementia, depression, and premature mortality,” it said. Finding ‘personal connections’ in Akron Murthy recently met with groups working toward community repair in Akron, Ohio, as part of his new Together Project, supported by the Knight Foundation.In one meeting, leaders of the Well Community Development Corp. told of fostering affordable housing and small businesses in a marginalized neighborhood and cultivating social gatherings, whether at the local elementary school or the coffee shop it launched in the former church that houses its offices.One encouraging development: Families have resumed trick-or-treating after years of largely dormant Halloweens in the neighborhood.“Those types of things make a big difference,” said Zac Kohl, executive director of The Well. “It’s not just a safe, dry roof over your head. It’s the personal connections.”Across town, more local leaders met in a community room overlooking Summit Lake.The urban lakefront, once obscured by overgrowth, now draws joggers, fishers, boaters, people grilling. Summit Lake Nature Center provides educational programs and urban garden plots. The lakefront adjoins a public housing development and a recreational trail.“It’s strategically located to try to get people in the space to talk and interact with one another,” said Erin Myers, director of real estate development for the Akron Metropolitan Housing Authority.“I love that you’ve worked on creating spaces where people can gather and connecting them with nature,” Murthy told the gathering. Neighbors 'responsible for each other' in Baltimore On an October afternoon on Baltimore's outskirts, neighbors set out trays heaped with vegan jambalaya, beet salad, fresh-roasted goat meat and more. A rooster crowed insistently from a nearby backyard.Before the neighborhood feast, dozens of visitors gathered for a walking tour. Ulysses Archie described how this short block of Collins Avenue became a hub of backyard farming, environmental cleanup and neighborly connection.Visitors saw hens and rabbits raised by neighbors, and they explored a “Peace Park” created out of an abandoned lot, which now hosts food distributions and summer camps for neighborhood kids. “The core of what we do is building relationships, and building relationships with nature,” Archie said.Neighbors described helping to clear overgrowth and create footpaths in an adjacent urban forest. They described their “intentional” community — not a formal program, but a commitment to caring for each other and the wider community, sharing anything from potlucks to rides to child care.Michael Sarbanes and his late wife, Jill Wrigley, moved to the neighborhood three decades ago. They spent long hours of youth mentoring and other services.“We were burning out,” Sarbanes recalled. They recognized, “We need to be doing this in community.”They reached out to other families involved in social justice work. Though not everyone on the block is an active participant, several moved in or got involved over the years.Some belong to a local Catholic Worker group. Others are Protestants, Muslims, those with no religion, “but believing we are responsible for each other,” said resident Suzanne Fontanesi.Participants include Ulysses and Chrysalinn Archie, who founded the Baltimore Gift Economy, a small nonprofit.Years earlier, Ulysses Archie suffered an injury that left him struggling financially and in spirit.He joined an urban farming program, “put my hands in the soil, and my life was kind of normal again,” he said. That healing work helped inspire the backyard farming.While the Archies appreciated the charities that supported their family during his long recovery, they often felt treated impersonally.With the Baltimore Gift Economy, they’re seeking a more personal approach. A couple times a week, for example, they place food donated by nearby organic stores at the Peace Park. Participants take what suits their diet and needs.Participants are respectful and don’t hoard, Ulysses Archie said.The food isn’t labeled “free.”“‘Free’ is really transactional,” Archie said. “When we present it as a gift, it’s really relational.” The group encourages recipients “to realize that they have something to give.”Myk Lewis, 56, who returned to Baltimore after years in California, tends chickens and rabbits in his backyard. Neighbors support him as he cares for his aging mother.“I probably wouldn’t have been able to move back and start my life over if it wasn’t for them,” he said. Connecting to the land and each other in Kentucky On another October day in the small Kentucky town of New Castle, a guitarist played folk-rock classics as patrons lined up beneath a tent pavilion.Area chefs served them smoked brisket with salsa, beef Wellington bites, Thai beef salad and other specialties.But this “Beef Bash” was about much more than beef.Its sponsor, a cooperative of local farmers who raise grass-fed cattle, coordinates the processing and marketing of their beef to area restaurants and individuals. The program aims to provide a dependable income — helping small farmers stay on the farm and, in turn, strengthening rural communities.“With just a little help, people and land can heal,” said Mary Berry, executive director of the Berry Center of New Castle, which launched the cooperative.The cooperative adapts methods from a former tobacco quota system that provided some stability for small farmers. After that program’s demise in 2004, “people lost what they held in common, which was an agricultural economy and calendar,” Berry said. “We also needed each other.”The surrounding community remains rural, but less tight-knit, she said, as many commute elsewhere or farm at a larger scale.The center promotes the agrarian principles of her father, the novelist and essayist Wendell Berry.At the end of the Beef Bash, farmers cheerfully gathered for a group photo, trading stories of tractor mishaps and middle of the night calving.They were finding community and mutual support.“If we keep our farms going, we’re all winning,” said one farmer, Ashley Pyles.Another, Kylen Douglas, underscored the effects of strained social bonds.“Everything’s so digital, and everything’s with the phone,” Douglas said. “We’re disconnected not only from where our food comes from, but just the center of life. Fewer people are going to church. Rural communities are having a hard time.”Stronger farms can strengthen these communities, he said. “Everybody should be able to have the opportunity to live here.” Healing ‘block by block’ in Pittsburgh On a recent weekday at the Neighborhood Resilience Project in Pittsburgh, some residents were upstairs, training for a project to get more people qualified to perform CPR in marginalized neighborhoods.Downstairs amid the fragrant incense of St. Moses the Black Orthodox Church, worshippers were concluding a prayer liturgy. Afterward, they set out folding tables for a light meal of soup, hummus and conversation.The parish is closely fused with the Neighborhood Resilience Project, an Orthodox social service agency.They share a modest brick building in Pittsburgh’s Hill District, a historically Black neighborhood just blocks from downtown but a world away — long suffering from crime, gun violence, racism and displacement.The project’s mission is “trauma-informed community development.” It hosts a food pantry and free health clinic. It deploys community health deputies and provides emotional support at violent crime scenes.“In our work, community building is absolutely the core intervention,” said the Rev. Paul Abernathy, its founder and CEO.Social isolation “is no longer simply the experience of marginalized communities,” he observed. “Now it seems as though the infection of isolation has spread across society.”The center serves people regardless of faith. Not everyone on staff belongs to the church, though the church is attracting members.“It felt like real community, and people my age who want to actually do some things and not just talk about doing something,” said Cecelia Olson, a recent college graduate. “We’re going to feed people because they’re hungry, and it’s not that complicated.”Fidelia Gaba, a University of Pittsburgh medical student who grew up in another church tradition, recently was confirmed at St. Moses.One Sunday, she felt emotionally distanced and couldn’t even sing. “I remember being carried by the church,” she said. “What was broken in me was healed.”Project workers are reaching the isolated. Kim Lowe, a community health deputy, helps residents get to a food bank, address a child’s conflict at school, “whatever the need is,” she said.One recent afternoon, Lowe visited Tricia Berger in the small apartment she shares with her daughter and grandson. Berger said she has multiple sclerosis and struggles with depression and anxiety. Lowe provides practical help, and the two enjoy conversing and watching comedy routines.“We connect well, with common interests, as well as her helping me get beyond my loneliness and conquering my fear,” Berger said.For Abernathy, such efforts exemplify community healing.“It has to be healed person by person, relationship by relationship, block by block,” he said. “Honestly, neighborhood by neighborhood, it can be healed.”AP videojournalist Jessie Wardarski contributed.Associated Press religion coverage receives support through the AP’s collaboration with The Conversation US, with funding from Lilly Endowment Inc. The AP is solely responsible for this content.Copyright 2025 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.Photos You Should See – December 2025

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In the rainforests of Madagascar, vanilla offers hope to farmers hindered by the relentless tide of poverty and cyclones. How will the women responsible for vanilla cultivation weather the storms that threaten their livelihoods? Join us on this journey to uncover the truth behind one of the world’s most beloved spices and to support the women farmers at the heart of the vanilla industry.

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Let There be Light

Genesis 1:3 And God said, “Let there be light,” and there was light. Taiwan was founded on agriculture in the early days. However, in the face of rapid urbanization, there was no time to build infrastructure such as sewage pipelines, and a large amount of sewage was discharged indiscriminately, causing severe water pollution. To connect domestic sewage to the water purification plant and turn it into water resources that can be continuously recycled, the sewage engineering team adopted a most humane "equation" to appease and compensate the residents disturbed by the project. They invited the residents to participate in the beautification design of the back alley, which was damaged by the engineering project, and hired old painters who have painted "Roman Holiday" and "Back to the Future" movie billboards, and new generation painters to create with colorful brushes. The colorful paintings make the originally dark, dirty, and smelly back alleys clean and bright, and people are more willing to enter the back alleys to make tea and chat, a secret paradise for locals is then created. Let’s walk into the back alleys and see how the light makers light up the back alleys with human touch and let the light penetrate the water, creating Formosa’s unique “Light Making Equation”. This action has been carried out since 2016 and will continue in the future.

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What if every person could actually make an impact on the world? “Green Waste” takes an in-depth look at the process of recycling and waste management in the community of Flagstaff. From recycling plastic bags, to re-using glass bottles, from recycling hazardous waste to the efforts of local businesses, the film shows how every contribution, no matter how small, can collectively make the difference for a better tomorrow. Filmed and Produced under the Emerging Filmmakers Program for youth filmmakers.

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The Fellowship of the Springs

Florida’s artesian springs are a natural wonder of the world. As unique as the geysers of Yellowstone and as mesmerizing as Vernal Falls in Yosemite, these blue jewels surrounding the north Florida landscape are considered a treasure by many who see them. The state contains the largest and highest concentration of fresh water springs on earth. But today, the future of Florida’s springs is uncertain. With flow levels declining and nitrate pollution on the rise, the springs today bear the scars of a profound struggle. Florida's own government continues to approve permits for large companies that want to pump water from the springs and their springsheds, for nominal permit fees that often cost less than a day pass to Disney World. The Fellowship of the Springs takes viewers behind the scenes of the fight to save Florida's springs, from the halls of the state capitol in Tallahassee to deep caves of Ichetucknee spring.

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Group Unveils Vision to Upgrade Limón Costa Rica

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Sure, the Newspaper Informed. but as It Fades, Those Who Used It for Other Things Must Adjust, Too

The country’s largest magnesium supplier shut down. Now what?

MIT in the media: 2025 in review

4 generations have celebrated holidays at this Oregon family’s midcentury beach house

Bit by Bit, Small US Groups Chip Away at Historic Levels of Social Isolation

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Voice of Vanilla

Una Perla de la Revolucion (A Pearl of the Revolution)

Let There be Light

Green Waste

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