From Wild West sheriffs trading drinks for votes to PACs pouring on the soft money, cash has long been central to politics. This relationship only deepened in January 2011 with the Supreme Court’s Citizens United decision, which enabled corporations to spend unlimited amounts in support of candidates — and anonymously, should they choose to do so.

The Foreign Relations Appropriations Act requires that the President submit an annual report identifying countries that produce or serve as transit points for illicit drugs. Based on the report, formal U.S. assistance under the Foreign Operations Appropriations Act may be withheld from countries designated to have “failed demonstrably” to meet their obligations to curb the drug trade.

Scientists are still trying to gain a better understanding of the Zika virus–which the World Health Organization has called an international public health emergency–while public health officials scramble to manage outbreaks without a complete scientific picture of the disease.

Reporting on the issue of climate change has sometimes been characterized by “false balance” — the tendency to cover scientific findings as if there were always two “sides” that each legitimately differed over facts. But over the past decade, the scientific consensus has grown even clearer: Global warming is happening and humans are the cause.

While the 1990s were a time of economic growth and declining poverty in the United States, the year 2000 marked a turning point. A mild recession was followed by a “jobless recovery,” and poverty rates began to increase. Between 2000 and 2008, the number of the U.S. residents living in poverty increased at nearly twice the growth rate of the population as a whole. This translates to an increase in the national poverty rate by 0.8% to 15.2% in 2008.