From car license plate tags to specialist training, tools are in place to curb police excesses.

On a morning in 2018, a then 18-year-old Reginald “Neli” Latson sat outside a Stafford County, Virginia, school library waiting for it to open when a police officer approached him. Latson, who is African American and autistic, did not give his name to officers when he was asked and attempted to walk away, which led to an altercation. Latson was charged with assaulting a police officer. He was sentenced to two years behind bars and eight years of probation.

Latson’s situation is all too common for the autistic community. According to a 2017 study from Drexel University in Philadelphia, by age 21, 1 in every 5 youths with autism is stopped and questioned by police, and 1 in 20 is arrested. Now, police departments, state governments, universities, hospitals and researchers are beginning to come together to break that cycle and improve relations between the autistic community and police.

After a childhood of adversity, Chelsea Dungee is a breakout star on the court.

Every basketball player wants to cook up a coach like this, one with green lights, not stop signs. At Arkansas, women’s basketball coach Mike Neighbors’ only diktat is that his players have to practice a Cirque du Soleil move before they can use it in the game. Practice it once, of course. That’s enough. Go play.

The dynamic, impetuous, rambunctious Chelsea Dungee takes gleeful advantage of the freedom.

The heartland's fears of climate change could affect who becomes president.

It was the night of the Liberty and Justice Celebration in Des Moines, the biggest campaign event of the Democratic presidential race so far. And when Tom Perez was asked what he would like to hear more about from the candidates in Iowa, the Democratic National Committee chair didn’t reach for bromides about issues like rural health care or ethanol subsidies. No, it was climate change that caught his attention.

“You talk to folks in Iowa, Nebraska, elsewhere, climate change isn’t simply the West Coast and East Coast — you know it here,” he said.

Indeed. Landlocked Iowa, the heartland of the country, is being crippled by climate change, as seemingly biblical floods ruin crops and retirement plans. In fact, historic rainfalls battered both eastern and western parts of the state this year. This led to a surprising finding from a report by the Iowa Policy Project and the University of Wisconsin: The impacts of climate change on increased rainfall are much clearer in Iowa and the Upper Midwest than anywhere else in the country.