The U.S. Federal Reserve voted to raise interest rates for the first time in 2017 at its two-day Federal Open Market Committee (FOMC) March meeting, which concluded on Wednesday. The move was widely expected by analysts and Fed watchers: Economic indicators have been pointing an … | Continue reading
President Donald Trump doesn’t put a lot of stock in security researchers’ ability to track down cyberattackers. When the Democratic National Committee’s systems were breached during the presidential campaign, he shrugged and said just about anyone could have been behind the hack … | Continue reading
Mount Etna, on the Italian island of Sicily, is not only the highest active volcano in Europe at 10,810 feet (3,295 meters), but is one of the most active in the world. Historical observations of Etna’s eruptions go back as far as 3,500 years, with geological observations reachin … | Continue reading
If you could have been there, somewhere in Siberia at the end of the Paleozoic Era nearly 252 million years ago, you would have witnessed an apocalyptic horror that rarely visits our planet.Also, I mean, you would have been doomed. Almost certainly. It was a bad scene. Mass extin … | Continue reading
Perhaps the key question hanging over Wednesday’s parliamentary elections in the Netherlands is whether the right-wing, anti-Islam Freedom Party can finally cements its place as a national political powerhouse. The party’s leader, Geert Wilders, is frequently characterized as the … | Continue reading
With university tuition and living costs on the rise, community colleges have become increasingly attractive for those looking to save on their education. And yet community-college students, in particular, face challenges affording school.A new report from the Wisconsin HOPE Lab … | Continue reading
When is a mine-safety agency not really a mine-safety agency? Soon, if a bill under consideration in the West Virginia Legislature passes. The proposal would prevent state regulators from writing policies, downgrading their work to drafting suggested guidelines; strip them of the … | Continue reading
Dark matter is the mysterious substance that makes up over 25 percent of the universe—it is basically invisible. “Conceptual metaphors seem to be the method of choice for explaining what, exactly, dark matter is,” writes Nadja Oertelt on the website for her new science publicatio … | Continue reading
If you've ever bought a ciabatta at the bakery or ordered focaccia at a restaurant or made a no-knead loaf, or wondered what the Pugliese or Emilia version of pumpkin ravioli would taste like and how to make it, you've been influenced by Carol Field.Field, who died last Friday af … | Continue reading
Chris Murphy sensed well before most people that the 2016 election would largely revolve around U.S. foreign policy. Not foreign policy in the narrow, traditional sense—as in, which candidate had the better plan to deal with Russia or defeat ISIS. Rather, foreign policy in its mo … | Continue reading
For years, whenever people have seen their livelihoods vanish, politicians have told them to “move to opportunity” or to “get more skills and work harder.” Embedded in their message is the assumption that there is no way to stop the market’s force, and that the best people can do … | Continue reading
The centuries-old fairytale of Beauty and the Beast is a story of transformative love, and of learning to see someone’s inner beauty, that ends in a blessed matrimony with a handsome prince. As such, it was virtually tailor-made for Disney. The studio’s 1991 film remains arguably … | Continue reading
At a time when President Donald Trump is working to dismantle former President Barack Obama’s environmental legacy, more than a dozen House Republicans are calling for action to confront the threat of a changing climate.Seventeen Republican lawmakers, including Elise Stefanik of … | Continue reading
Water guns were poised, sniper-style, from rooftop terraces. Rivers of red slushy water streamed down the roads. Motorcyclists, wielding fistfuls of candy-colored powder, launched drive-by assaults. And on a packed street corner, throngs of men, caked in chalky pink dust, shimmie … | Continue reading
Alain Frantz is a population geneticist—not a detective or policeman or forensics expert. But he often works on game animals, like deer and badgers, which naturally leads to working with collaborators who work with hunters. And that is how the mystery of the dead hunting dog fell … | Continue reading
The first month of the Trump administration was mostly a discouraging one for labor unions. Since taking office, the president has frozen federal hiring (though he did pledge to hire 15,000 border patrol agents) and restated his support for a national “right to work” law that wou … | Continue reading
On March 3, students looking to fill out the Free Application for Federal Student Aid (FAFSA) were met with a surprise: The online application’s data-retrieval tool, which helps to automatically enter information from their tax returns, had malfunctioned. Performing the process m … | Continue reading
Most student financial aid for higher education comes in two forms: loans and grants. As tuition costs have grown, however, both options have had a hard time keeping up—grants are oversubscribed and loans have left college dropouts struggling to pay off debts without any of the f … | Continue reading
Texas Representatives Beto O’Rourke and Will Hurd are on day two of their cross-country road trip to Washington, D.C. O’Rourke is a Democrat and Hurd is a Republican, and on Tuesday, they decided to drive in a rented Chevy Impala from San Antonio to the nation’s capital after a s … | Continue reading
I hoard slippers—the thin-soled, terry kind that many hotels include in their amenity packages. My house is full of them, some still plastic-wrapped. Shoes that will never be good for anything but indoor wear. Yet to me, they are simply too precious to leave behind.MORE FROM OUR … | Continue reading
In January of this year, a ritual took shape on Capitol Hill, as one Trump nominee after another sat down a Senate committee for their confirmation hearing. The nominee shuffled his papers, greeted the lawmakers, and delivered conciliatory pablum about climate change.As many soon … | Continue reading
—Donald Trump paid about $38 million in taxes in 2005 on an income of about $150 million, MSNBC reported. My colleague Matt Ford wrote about it last night here.—The Dutch vote today in an election that is being seen as a wider test of the European mood toward its elites. My colle … | Continue reading
In early February, a Republican Congressman from Florida introduced a bill that would “terminate the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA)” by next December. But the agency isn’t going anywhere, and neither is the bill. As my colleague Robinson Meyer argued, it’s “stunt legislati … | Continue reading
The reigning narrative about Spoon is that there really is no narrative. “In a career that spans more than 20 years, Spoon has perfected a kind of ruthlessly airtight efficiency,” writes Stephen Thompson at NPR, summing up the common take on the group. “Every few years, the Austi … | Continue reading
Donald Trump is not a popular president.His national approval rating sunk to 39 percent in the latest Gallup survey, a historically poor showing for a commander in chief in his first 100 days. Most other polls haven’t shown him near 50 percent since a brief period right around hi … | Continue reading
On a quiet afternoon, two medium-sized nuclear blasts level portions of Manhattan.If this were a movie, hordes of panicked New Yorkers would pour out into the streets, running around and calling out for their loved ones. But reality doesn’t usually line up with Hollywood’s vision … | Continue reading
In 1981, Jerry Summers learned by phone that his mother was likely to die in the next few days. He jumped in the car and drove from his Indiana home to Illinois. There he spent the next week in the hospital by her side, sleeping on couches and expecting any conversation with her … | Continue reading
What’s in Donald Trump’s tax returns?The simple question has simmered under many of the president’s controversies, ranging from his personal wealth (Is he actually as rich as he claims? Does he pay taxes on it?) to his Russia policies (Does he owe money to Kremlin-linked banks?). … | Continue reading
Today in 5 LinesWhite House Press Secretary Sean Spicer downplayed the Congressional Budget Office’s analysis of the new House Republican health-care plan, saying the CBO is “pretty good at dollars, not as good at people.” Vice President Mike Pence and Health and Human Services S … | Continue reading
The Trump administration has been at the center of a few wild claims in recent weeks, but there’s an explanation. To put it in the native patois of Trump’s signature form, Twitter:lol jk!For two straight days, Press Secretary Sean Spicer has played off comments made by President … | Continue reading
School segregation did not end in 1954 with the landmark Brown v. Board of Education decision. For the past 52 years, the Cleveland, Mississippi, school district has faced ongoing litigation in response to its racially divided high schools and middle schools. After decades of leg … | Continue reading
Recep Tayyip Erdogan was at one time known for articulating a foreign policy of “zero problems with our neighbors.” If that always seemed perhaps overly ambitious given the unpredictability of international affairs, some of Turkey’s recent problems originate with Erdogan’s own mo … | Continue reading
Breitbart News has been, and may forever be, at war with House Speaker Paul Ryan.Ryan has been a favorite target at Breitbart for years. Current White House chief strategist and former Breitbart chairman Steve Bannon has made little secret of his disdain for Ryan. In December 201 … | Continue reading
On Monday, The Washington Post reported that Russell Moore—the leader of the Southern Baptist Convention’s political arm—might lose his job. The denomination’s executive committee had asked Moore for a private meeting to discuss an unfolding controversy: More than 100 churches ar … | Continue reading
If the terminology of Republican Medicaid policy—“per-capita caps,” “block grants,” “inflation targets”—seems a bit arcane, Monday’s release of the Congressional Budget Office’s report on the GOP’s repeal-and-replace bill makes it pretty simple: The current health-care proposal i … | Continue reading
The numbers are in, and they aren’t great for some of the sickest people in the country.On Monday, the Congressional Budget Office scored the American Health Care Act, projecting that the new Republican health reform would make dramatic changes to the American health-care landsca … | Continue reading
South by Southwest’s film festival used to be a place for indie cast-offs that didn’t make the cut for Sundance. But in keeping with the young, hip vibe of the ever-growing Austin conglomeration of concerts, screenings, and tech panels, SXSW’s film fest has evolved its own distin … | Continue reading
One of the greatest mysteries about the American economy right now is why workers don’t seem to be getting all that much better at their jobs over time. From 2007 to 2016, productivity in the U.S. grew at about 1 percent—a historically low rate. In other recent periods, it’s been … | Continue reading
A bizarre corruption scandal. Massive street protests. A president impeached and removed. On a cursory look, recent events in South Korea may appear to have plunged the country into turmoil. In fact, what the country is experiencing is a remarkable triumph of democracy.In 2012, S … | Continue reading
The Trump administration declared its war against facts early, and with panache, with Press Secretary Sean Spicer striding to a podium the day after the inauguration to lay out a series of patently untrue assertions, and Kellyanne Conway christening them “alternative facts” the f … | Continue reading
The inhabitants of Rjukan in southern Norway have a complex relationship with the sun. “More than other places I’ve lived, they like to talk about the sun: When it’s coming back, if it’s a long time since they’ve seen the sun,” says artist Martin Andersen. “They’re a little obses … | Continue reading
Taste is the oldest of our five senses, and yet perhaps the least understood. It’s far more complicated than salty versus sweet: New research is dramatically expanding our knowledge of taste, showing that it’s intimately connected to obesity, mood, immunity, and more. In this epi … | Continue reading
While a national policy on higher education has yet to be decided, it’s clear where California stands. On Monday, the state’s Democrats released a financial-aid plan that covers both tuition and living expenses, with the end goal of eliminating student loans among 400,000 student … | Continue reading
This post reveals “plot” points of episode 14 of The Bachelor season 21.“You guys all right?” Chris Harrison asked Nick Viall and Vanessa Grimaldi on Monday night. The couple—the Bachelor and the “winner” of the 21st season of The Bachelor—had just kissed each other for the first … | Continue reading
In a story for Vulture published yesterday, titled “How Stephen Colbert Got His Groove Back,” Josef Adalian has an intriguing and detailed analysis of all the factors that have contributed to Colbert’s recent resurgence in the ratings. These include: learning not to micromanage, … | Continue reading
Last year, the Heritage Foundation, a conservative Washington, D.C., think tank, published a report titled “Patriotic Assimilation Is an Indispensable Condition in a Land of Immigrants.” It complained that “elites—in the government, the culture, and the academy—have led a push to … | Continue reading
Here’s what we know so far:—The National Weather Service says more than a foot of snow is expected in some areas, along with strong winds.—Schools are closed in New York City and Boston.—Nearly 7,000 flights have been canceled.—This is a developing story and we’ll be following it … | Continue reading
Since computing began in the 1940s, women have led major developments in programming and software development. In 1984, 37 percent of computer-science majors were women. What happened? The tech industry's image shifted rapidly in the 1980s and ’90s, and society began to associate … | Continue reading