Welcome to Sunday. The top 5 most-read stories of the week are displayed below. Below that are five editors’ selections we want to make sure you don’t miss.

You can also get the most-read stories in a magazine-style e-book.

This week our readers appreciated a story from Suresh Kuchipudi, a professor of emerging infectious diseases at Penn State. Kuchipudi explains to nonexperts – like me – how the omicron subvariant BA.5 uses “classic techniques” to became a master of disguise and what it means for the current COVID-19 surge.

In editors’ picks, historian Brenda J. Child writes about Pope Francis’ apology tour in Canada during which the leader of the Catholic Church visited boarding schools set up to assimilate Indigenous children. Child writes that Christianity is woven into the history of such Canadian schools – and, to a lesser extent, American ones – where Indigenous children often suffered neglect and abuse and were separated from their families, language and culture. Child is the granddaughter of school survivors and writes, “Many Indigenous people, me included, question whether the pope’s apology fell short in holding the church responsible.”

Also read Mississippi State professor of finance D. Brian Blank tackle the question: Is the U.S. in a recession?

Enjoy the rest of your weekend! Next week, we’ll bring you stories about the influence partisan election officials wield, food insecurity in Gen Z, and living with urban coyotes.

Emily Costello

Managing Editor

Readers' picks

Pro-Trump protesters and police clash on Jan. 6, 2021, at the U.S. Capitol. Lev Radin/Pacific Press/LightRocket via Getty Images

Why Donald Trump can’t be prosecuted for ‘dereliction of duty’ for his inaction on Jan. 6

Tim Bakken, United States Military Academy West Point

With the exception of a few states, dereliction of a duty is mostly used in military law and does not apply to citizens, including US presidents.

Editors' picks

Gilda Soosay, president of Our Lady of Seven Sorrows Parish Council in Maskwacis, Canada, where Pope Francis visited the site of a state school for Indigenous children. Cole Burston/AFP via Getty Images

Christianity was a major part of Indigenous boarding schools – a historian whose family survived them explains

Brenda J. Child, University of Minnesota

A historian of the residential schools explains how religion played a key role in assimilationist systems for Indigenous children in Canada and the United States.

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