The first time I met Martin McGuinness was in October 1997, in Castle Buildings at Stormont together with Tony Blair. We had arranged the meeting in a small windowless room in the drab government block to avoid TV cameras filming the meeting as they had a previous meeting with Mo … | Continue reading
Near the southern tip of Nevada is a ridge politicians have been fighting over for 30 years.Yucca Mountain was designated the permanent underground storage site for nuclear waste in 1987. It had an ambitious mission—to entomb high-level radioactive waste safely for at least 10,00 … | Continue reading
When smog gets bad, the air becomes more than a coolness on your skin or a haze on the horizon. When smog gets bad, you can taste it.“Today, Shanghai air really has a layered taste. At first, it tastes slightly astringent with some smokiness. Upon full contact with your palate, t … | Continue reading
Not much more than a decade ago, the idea that Martin McGuinness and Ian Paisley’s names belonged together might have seemed fantastical.One was a crusty Protestant firebrand from Antrim. The other was a Catholic militant from Derry young enough to be his son. They stood on oppos … | Continue reading
What’s the difference between rating a movie you just watched out of five stars, versus giving it a thumbs-up or thumbs-down? Most people might not see too much of a distinction—but Netflix does. According to the streaming service, you give a star rating to impress other people; … | Continue reading
The U.S. Constitution, it is fair to say, is normally thought of as a political document. It lays out the American system of government and the relationships among the various institutions.But in a powerful new book The Crisis of the Middle-Class Constitution, the Vanderbilt lega … | Continue reading
President Trump tried negotiating with conservatives on health care.He brought them to the White House and treated them to a night of bowling. He listened to their concerns about Speaker Paul Ryan’s American Health Care Act. With his customary fanfare, Trump even made the House l … | Continue reading
Zak Bickel / The AtlanticHenry David Thoreau is something of a poster child for solitude. In his essay “Walking,” published just after his death in our June 1862 issue, Thoreau made the case “for absolute freedom and wildness … to regard man as an inhabitant, or a part and parcel … | Continue reading
Among its many milestones, the 2016 U.S. presidential race marked the first time both the Democratic and Republican nominees released their child-care and paid-leave plans prior to the election. While campaigning, Donald Trump proposed a dependent-care savings account and a small … | Continue reading
By Heart is a series in which authors share and discuss their all-time favorite passages in literature. See entries from Karl Ove Knausgaard, George Saunders, Emma Donoghue, Michael Chabon, and more.Doug McLeanArtistic freedom, paradoxically, relies on the presence of constraints … | Continue reading
A reader revives our collection of miscarriage stories with an uncommon case of her own—two cases, in fact:Thank you so much for the series on abortion you carry, Chris—turning the abstract (which is very easy to judge, from a distance) into real-life stories, of real-life people … | Continue reading
This Friday will mark the release of one of the more unusual sequels of recent years, T2 Trainspotting, Danny Boyle’s follow-up to the 1996 film that largely put him on the map as a director. That film, based loosely on the novel by Irvine Welsh, was a giddily stylish picaresque … | Continue reading
It had to be Twitter. What other platform could a member of Congress use during a high-profile Congressional hearing to keep tabs on the president’s reaction to that very hearing?Not TV. Not radio. Certainly not a crinkly newspaper full of yesterday’s news.But on Twitter, it’s po … | Continue reading
Martin McGuinness, the former IRA chief of staff turned peace negotiator who stepped down as Northern Ireland’s deputy first minister just months ago, has died at the age of 66.His life charted a remarkable transition. From a quiet-mannered butcher's apprentice, he first became a … | Continue reading
Here’s a little parable. A friend of mine was so enamored of Google Reader that he built a clone when it died. It was just like the original, except that you could add pictures to your posts, and you could Like comments. The original Reader was dominated by conversation, much of … | Continue reading
—The U.S. is reportedly limiting to cellphones the kinds of electronics that passengers on nonstop U.S.-bound flights from 10 airports in eight countries can carry in their checked luggage.—Martin McGuinness, the Sinn Fein leader and former deputy first minister of Northern Irel … | Continue reading
ATLANTA—Brent Agnew remembers feeling a sense of relief when he left the meeting called to discuss his 6-year-old son Caleb’s anxiety attacks.As he and his wife, Jennifer, walked into the parking lot outside the E. E. Butler Center in Gainesville, Georgia, that day in 2006, the t … | Continue reading
The Department of Homeland Security will no longer allow passengers to carry electronics onto flights to the U.S. from ten major airports in the Middle East and North Africa. Devices larger than a mobile phone—including laptops, tablets, and cameras—will need to be placed in chec … | Continue reading
The president’s first 100 days have been, by and large, a disaster.Reports of chaos, confusion, and infighting seem to leak out of the West Wing on a daily basis. The president is his own worst enemy, easily distracted, obsessed with minutiae, and uninterested in instilling much … | Continue reading
Have you ever wanted to play better chess? To think and work more effectively, seeing moves 10 steps ahead? Vanquishing opponents with mental energy to spare? Well now you can, with cognitive-enhancement drugs.That’s how the first half of the pharmaceutical commercial might go. T … | Continue reading
Now that we’re done making nice, here’s my question for Judge Neil Gorsuch:What campaign promises did you make to get this job, and do you intend to keep them?It’s a rude question, akin to throwing a dead cat into a church service. It’s disrespectful to Gorsuch—a judge whom I res … | Continue reading
If you’re ever sued, I tell my students, the lawyer you want is not the one who thumps the table and assures you that your case is open and shut. No, it’s the lawyer who sits quietly and then says, “We need to get ready, because the other side has a strong case”—and then states t … | Continue reading
If you watched James Comey’s sensational testimony on Capitol Hill Monday—or read about it in the ensuing avalanche of coverage from mainstream media organizations—you saw something extraordinary take place: For the first time, the FBI director publicly confirmed that the Justice … | Continue reading
What We’re FollowingConfirm and Deny: During a congressional hearing today, James Comey publicly confirmed that the FBI since late July has been investigating links between the Trump campaign and Russia’s election interference. Comey also said the bureau had “no information” to s … | Continue reading
In the hours before Neil Gorsuch introduced himself to the Senate Judiciary Committee on Monday, the senators laid out how they would interrogate him in the week ahead.President Trump’s Supreme Court nominee will spend the next few days answering probing questions from lawmakers … | Continue reading
Today in 5 LinesDuring a House Intelligence Committee hearing, FBI Director James Comey confirmed that the agency is investigating possible links between Trump campaign associates and the Russian government as part of a broader inquiry into Russia’s interference in the 2016 presi … | Continue reading
In the latest report from the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development, the Chinese mainland (consisting of the Beijing, Shanghai, Jiangsu, and Guangdong provinces) ranked fifth among nations with the world’s highest math scores. According to the report, around one … | Continue reading
Arguably the biggest contribution in recent years to the space-opera genre—that heady mix of sci-fi, fantasy adventure, and careful plotting that defines works like Star Wars and Doctor Who—has come from a video-game series: Mass Effect. With three titles released in 2007, 2010, … | Continue reading
Donald Trump’s military policy is a win-win proposition: The United States will win, and then it will win some more. Last week, the White House released its proposed budget, which calls for $639 billion in defense spending—a $54 billion increase from 2017 levels—along with massiv … | Continue reading
Marisol Conde-Hernandez is an undocumented law-school student who has always lived in fear that her legal status will impact her dreams, and especially her family’s future. As the new administration settles into the White House, this short documentary explores how Conde-Hernandez … | Continue reading
White House Press Secretary Sean Spicer indicated on Monday that President Trump is sticking with his allegations that former President Obama wiretapped Trump Tower, even after FBI Director James Comey insisted earlier in the day that he himself has “no information” to support th … | Continue reading
The playbook for pop stardom keeps adding chapters in the internet age, with the surprise album, the visual album, the retail mixtape, the hit-containing deluxe edition, and the album-in-progress all representing ways that stars have reanswered the once-settled question of how be … | Continue reading
Good news first, okay? Most children in the United States are healthy. And the overwhelming majority of them have health insurance. More than 95 percent of American children are covered.This is a 21st-century success story, one that health-care policy experts attribute to the Aff … | Continue reading
In New York City in 1849, a man named William Thompson stole a gold watch just by asking for it. Strolling down a busy Broadway, Thompson approached a stranger with a strange question: “Have you confidence in me to trust me with your watch until tomorrow?” Eager to prove his good … | Continue reading
An unusual bout of heavy rains powered by El Niño conditions have drenched parts of Peru with 10 times more rainfall than normal, causing rivers to overflow, and mudslides to destroy roads and farms. More than 70 deaths have been attributed to the flooding, which has isolated hun … | Continue reading
There is, as yet, no 2018 budget for the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency.What exists instead is a “skinny budget” proposal, released on Thursday by the White House. It advances a drastic and aggressively curtailed agenda for the EPA, planning to cut the agency’s budget by 31 … | Continue reading
Under President Trump, the federal role in education is set to be drastically curtailed. Last Thursday, Trump proposed slashing federal spending on schools by $9 billion. His education secretary, Betsy DeVos, has vowed to shrink her agency and return power to local officials, whi … | Continue reading
Raoul Schwing remembers sitting on a New Zealand mountaintop, watching a kea hovering in front of him, just an arm’s reach away. The large green parrot had jumped into an updraft, and was flying into the rushing air with such skill that it stayed in exactly the same spot. And the … | Continue reading
There’s little disagreement about the fact that economic inequality is problematic. But arguments persist over its origins, solutions, and which economic gaps are ultimately the most pernicious.In a his new book, Toxic Inequality: How America's Wealth Gap Destroys Mobility, Deepe … | Continue reading
FBI Director James Comey on Monday confirmed for the first time that the bureau is investigating whether Donald Trump’s campaign coordinated with the Russian government last year as part of Russia’s interference in the 2016 election.“I’ve been authorized by the Department of Just … | Continue reading
The percentage of Americans who disapprove of the job that President Trump is doing rose to 57 percent over the weekend, his worst showing yet. Just 37 percent now tell Gallup they approve. “At this point in his first term, President Obama's approval rating was hovering in the lo … | Continue reading
In September 2002, less than a year after Zacarias Moussaoui was indicted by a grand jury for his role in the 9/11 attacks, Moussaoui’s lawyers lodged an official complaint about how the government was handling digital evidence. They questioned the quality of the tools the govern … | Continue reading
The Senate kicks off its formal vetting process of President Trump’s Supreme Court pick in public view on Monday with a Senate Judiciary Committee hearing on the nomination of conservative judge Neil Gorsuch to the high court. That will mark a departure from the treatment that Me … | Continue reading
The history of computers is often told as a history of objects, from the abacus to the Babbage engine up through the code-breaking machines of World War II. In fact, it is better understood as a history of ideas, mainly ideas that emerged from mathematical logic, an obscure and c … | Continue reading
—FBI Director James Comey and Admiral Mike Rogers, the head of the National Security Agency, will appear today before the House Intelligence Committee to discuss, among other things, Russian interference in the U.S. presidential election.—Judge Neil Gorsuch, President Trump’s nom … | Continue reading
With brackets completed, March Madness 2017 is officially under way. And a new survey says that while the three-week long National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA) basketball tournament may be a huge distraction, it may also be a great tool for employee bonding.For some wor … | Continue reading
Barring unexpected closures, students enrolled in San Francisco Public Schools will have seven three-day weekends this school year; there are five three-day weekends on the Hartford Public Schools calendar for 2016-2017; and Atlanta Public Schools students are scheduled to have t … | Continue reading
I sat in a bunker hoping the incoming rocket did not have my name on it. I was a young CIA officer, called by September 11 to serve, and found myself amid generals and sheikhs, writing for presidents—the life I’d dreamed of since childhood. Drained by 18-hour days and fitful slee … | Continue reading