The European Union hosts this week what could be one of the most significant meetings of the year on climate change.

Last December's UN climate summit, in the South African port of Durban, saw heated discussions on a proposal that governments should commit to agreeing a new comprehensive global emissions-limiting deal with some kind of legal force before 2015.

American Secretary of State Hillary Clinton has been honoured by a British charity for the work she has done for the lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender (LGBT) community.

The politician has been named as the first winner of the World LGBT Award presented by The Kaleidoscope Trust and Pride London.

It recognises the international attention she brought to LGBT rights after her speech to the United Nations in Geneva in December 2011.

Bill Lehto knows what that’s like. He’s been active in the Minnesota atheist community for the past three years, but there are still members of his family he wouldn’t want to know about his lack of faith. The Farmington resident describes the act of announcing your atheism as coming out, and he knows many people who have been disowned by their families when they have announced their nonbelief.

Now, Lehto is turning to his background in the publishing industry to help atheists get their message out. Last year he founded a publishing company, Freethought House, specifically to publish a collection of essays by Minnesota atheists. Money from sales of the book, called Atheist Voices of Minnesota, will benefit the group Minnesota Atheists.

A Midwestern atheist tells of sitting in her lunchroom at work and listening as conversation opened up around her about religious differences. Her co-workers included several kinds of Protestants, a Catholic, even a Jew. Sensing they were in risky territory, they worked to find common ground. “At least there aren’t any atheists around here,” one woman said in a warm inclusive tone.

What’s a girl to do in a situation like that? Should she out herself or just keep quiet? In his seminal book, Stigma: Notes on the Management of Spoiled Identity, sociologist Erving Goffman posed the perennial quandary of stigmatized persons: “To display or not display; to tell or not to tell; to let on or not to let on; to lie or not to lie; and in each case, to whom, how, when, and where." (p. 42)

Could a gay-rights activist win the Nobel Peace Prize? It hasn’t happened yet, but this year could be the tipping point. Last month, when the prize committee prepared its top-secret short list of possible candidates, it chose from a pool that included the names of several activists submitted for consideration. What’s interesting is that the names are not those of Europeans or Americans, but Africans.

Why? Because activists from Africa are on the front lines in a way few of their compatriots elsewhere are. Thanks largely to the Internet, the message of “gay rights” may have gone global, with young people in Africa, Asia, and the Middle East plugged into contemporary gay cultures. But when it comes to their elders, the message seems to be lost in translation.

For the past several months, the political conversation has focused on a war on women's reproductive rights. The tenor of these recent debates, in large, has been downright regressive -- we've even seen state legislation holding that conception occurs two weeks before pregnancy. From the very beginning of these debates, I've been asking myself "How is it that in 2012, men are still in charge of the most basic of women's rights?" To answer this question I don't have to look far. My own life experiences (and those of women who are dear to me) reveal the reason.

It's getting down to the wire for preparations for Rio+20, the United Nations follow-up to the 1992 Earth Summit in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil.

In the past week or two, there have been several important developments regarding the issues of population growth, youth and reproductive health, human rights, and women's rights.

First there were the remarks by Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon at the UN Commission on Population and Development, one of ten so-called “functional commissions” of the United Nations Economic and Social Council (the official goal of the commission is to monitor, review and assess follow-up actions from the 1994 Cairo International Conference on Population and Development). The theme of the April session was on adolescents and youth.

Think you understand climate science better than the average American teen? On the PBS NewsHour this week we've been focusing on how climate change is taught in the classroom. But you can test your knowledge with this climate quiz.

If you ask most secularists, they’ll admit that, politically speaking, they lean left of center. Which is why it caused a few double takes when The Secular Coalition for America announced the hire of a — gasp! — Republican as its new executive director.

And not just any Republican: Edwina Rogers is a well-connected lobbyist whose resume includes stints at the National Republican Senatorial Committee and in the office of then–Majority Leader Trent Lott.