QUICK HITS

Canada seeks to compensate indigenous taken from families

TORONTO — Colleen Cardinal often wondered why her parents turned bright red in the sun but she grew dark along with her sisters. The puzzle was solved when she was a young teen, and the woman she had thought of as her mother disclosed that she had been picked out of a catalog of native children available for adoption.

Cardinal was one of thousands of indigenous children taken from their birth families from the 1960s to mid-1980s and sent to live with white families, who officials at the time insisted could give them better care. Many lost touch with their original culture and language. Doctors: Global warming is taking a toll on people’s health

WASHINGTON — Global warming is hurting people’s health a bit more than previously thought, but there’s hope that the Earth - and populations —can heal if the planet kicks its coal habit, a group of doctors and other experts said.

The poor and elderly are most threatened by worsening climate change, but there remains “glimmers of progress” especially after the 2015 Paris agreement to limit heattrapping carbon dioxide emissions, according to a new big study published Monday in the British medical journal Lancet.

Comparing the report to a health checkup, four researchers and several outside experts described Earth’s prognosis as “guarded.”

“There are some very severe warning signs, but there are some hopeful indicators too,” said co-author Dr. Howard Frumkin, a professor of environmental health at the University of Washington. “Given the right treatment and aggressive efforts to prevent things from getting worse, I think there’s hope.”

The report highlighted health problems stemming from more frequent heat waves, disease spread by insects, air pollution and other woes. While the disasters have been costly, deaths haven’t been increasing because society is doing a better but more expensive job adjusting to the changing conditions, the researchers noted.