���ϳԹ���

Ohio’s law requiring children under 16 to get parental consent to use social media apps must be restored, a divided panel of the Sixth Circuit Court of Appeals ruled Thursday. The decision comes as a blow to NetChoice, which has won court victories against identical digital identification laws in other states, including Arkansas, Louisiana and Georgia. The trade group representing TikTok, Snapchat, Meta and other major tech companies said the Ohio decision went against “clear national consensus” and that it intended to keep fighting. (Carr Smyth, 6/19)

Families in Tennessee with critically ill or severely disabled children who are undocumented are being asked to make a difficult choice: leave the state program that pays for lifesaving medication and treatment or stay and have their child reported to immigration authorities. The program, Children’s Special Services, funds low-income families who have exhausted all other options to cover costs for their sick children — helping pay for ventilators, wheelchairs or feeding tubes, for example, or for expensive drugs and emergency treatments. (Foster-Frau, 6/22)

Kelly Spivey has a reputation in Tarboro for being able to connect people with basic needs when they are struggling to fill their pantries and other parts of their homes. She’s got a five-shelf locker outside her house that she has been stocking with food and toiletries for the past eight years, a project she calls Kelly’s Community Pantry. On her porch and around her property, she has clothes, books and other items that people have donated for her to pass along to others. (Lopez, 6/22)

Carroll County’s age-adjusted suicide death rate of 10.6 deaths per 100,000 people looms higher than the state’s rate of 9.5 per 100,000, according to National Institutes of Health data from 2019 to 2023. Carroll has the 14th-highest suicide rate of Maryland’s 24 jurisdictions, and had an average annual count of 19 deaths, with a rate that has held stable from 2019 to 2023. (Fine, 6/22)

Air quality in central Los Angeles and the San Gabriel Valley continued to be affected by particulates in the smoke. The South Coast Air Quality Management District extended a warning about poor air quality until midday on Monday and indicated that the wind could disperse smoke as far as Riverside and Orange Counties. In a statement, the air quality agency said that particulates had reached “very unhealthy” levels in some areas on Saturday night and Sunday. The agency was expecting the most significant smoke effects north and east of the fire, and in the San Gabriel Valley and parts of the western Inland Empire. (Spoto, 6/21)

Three hikers died from apparent heat-related illnesses in the Grand Canyon on two separate days in the past week in the inner canyon, where temperatures can exceed 109 degrees Fahrenheit (43 degrees Celsius) in the shade during midday hours, federal officials said Friday. A 72-year-old man became ill from the heat on June 12 while hiking the South Kaibab Trail and died before rescue crews could reach him. Four days later, a 67-year-old man and a 68-year-old woman also appeared to suffer from heat-related illnesses while hiking the North Kaibab Trail and died before help arrived, the U.S. National Park Service said in a statement. (6/20)

As the World Cup gets underway in the United States, public health officials and researchers are surveilling for signs of infectious diseases, sexually transmitted infections, food-borne illnesses and other pathogens. But health departments in host cities say something else could be the biggest health-related risk to teams, players or fans: Heat. Extreme heat is the deadliest weather-related hazard in the U.S., claiming roughly 2,000 lives each year, according to data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC). (Kekatos, 6/18)

More than 2 percent of Oklahoma households were shut off each month in 2024, a rate that no other state approaches. In fact, only Alabama, Louisiana, and Texas had a shutoff rate above 2 percent in even one month of the year. In some low-shutoff states, like Iowa and Massachusetts, the monthly rate stays below half a percent all year long. Electricity isn’t particularly expensive in Oklahoma — as of March, the state’s average residential price-per-kilowatt-hour was the eighth-lowest in the nation. But residents’ incomes are lower than all but five states. (Weil, 6/22)