You’ve probably heard some version of the line, usually delivered with a sigh. Someone is having a crappy day. Or they’re in a weird mood. Or nothing seems to be going right, despite their best efforts. And they’ve laid the blame on Mercury, the smallest planet in our solar system, nearest to the sun. Everything is Mercury’s fault. The darn thing is in retrograde. And in fact, it’s happening right now.
The nation has selected a new musical champion, and he sings with a twang. This week, American Idol crowned Noah Thompson, a scruffy-goateed 20-year-old construction worker from Kentucky, as its 20th season’s winner. On his debut single, “One Day Tonight,” Thompson imagines giving a girlfriend all that she pines for: a diamond ring, a fixer-upper in Denver, a honeymoon in Vegas.
When I think of a sit-up, my mind flashes immediately to the (carpeted, for some reason) floor of my elementary-school gym. Twice a week, our teachers marched us there for ritual humiliation and light calisthenics, and under the watchful gaze of a former football coach with a whistle perpetually dangling from his lips, we’d warm up with the moves we’d been told were the building blocks of physical fitness—jumping jacks, push-ups, toe touches, and, of course, sit-ups.
A disproportionate number of cases in the recent monkeypox outbreak have shown up among gay and bisexual men. And as public-health authorities investigate possible links to sexual or other close physical contact at a Pride event in the Canary Islands, a sauna in Madrid, and other gay venues in Europe, government officials are trying hard not to single out a group that endured terrible stigma at the height of America’s AIDS crisis.
The philosopher Roger Scruton once wrote that people become conservative as they experience loss; the sense of passing, of dying and death. Loss gives them a love of things as they are, a desire to hold, to protect, to conserve—even if all attempts to do so come too late.I thought of this recently when I found myself in the absurd situation of feeling sad that a multimillionaire French soccer player had decided against joining the world’s most successful club.
The nation’s hospital regulator is probing hospitals where patients were likely infected with Covid after a record spike in transmission this year.
Governments warn against panicking, but they are planning for the worst outcome.
The companies plan to finish submitting data to the Food and Drug Administration this week.
Democratic inaction at the federal level could complicate the party’s efforts to run this fall as champions of reproductive rights.
Ashish Jha said he doesn’t expect monkeypox will become a particularly big threat.
Fêted at the World Economic Forum in 2017, Xi Jinping is now accused of torpedoing the global economy with his disastrous Zero Covid strategy.
Open markets aren’t what they used to be. A more complicated, more regional economic system is reshaping the global order.
Despite high inflation, the U.S. is “moving from the strongest economic recovery in modern history to what can be a period of more stable and resilient growth,” Brian Deese said.
On a month-to-month basis, prices rose 0.3% from March to April, a still-elevated rate but the smallest increase in eight months.
Rates this year could reach their highest levels since before the 2008 Wall Street crash if surging prices continue.
As fighting continues in Ukraine, we speak with journalist Patrick Cockburn, who says Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky is peddling a “vague triumphalism” which is “obscuring just how dangerous and how bad the situation has become.” His recent CounterPunch piece is headlined “London and Washington are Being Propelled by Hubris — Just as Putin was.
McCarthy’s attorney argues in letter that the committee cannot issue subpoenas to the lawmakers under House rules.
McCarthy’s attorney argues in letter that the committee cannot issue subpoenas to the lawmakers under House rules.
With the primaries over, and Trump nemesis Brad Raffensperger victorious, Georgia’s Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis is pulling out the stops.
Yesterday I wondered why Ukraine was so hell-bent on defending Severodonetsk, isolated on a deep salient surrounded on three sides and no natural barriers, when those forces could simply cross the river and hold out in a much more defensible Lysychansk. Retired Australian general Mick Ryan pondered the same today, noting that “the tactical and political necessity to hold out in Severodonetsk is questionable.
It is Friday. This week has been a brutal reminder of what divided opinions on “American exceptionalism” in our leadership class really are. Children were murdered this week in a way that otherwise only exists in countries being bombed by missiles. While the overwhelming majority of Americans are demanding that action be taken to make our country safer for children going to elementary schools, corporate gun lobby money is a more powerful master to conservative lawmakers.
He ended his speech praising the National Rifle Association with his trademark “dance” step.
Elderly Asian Americans have been subject to increased violence since the start of the novel coronavirus pandemic, thanks to Donald Trump’s racist language about COVID-19 and the right-wing “news” media’s quick action in adopting and disseminating it themselves.
At a time when the world seems to be spinning off its axis with children and adults slaughtered by gunfire, a power-hungry dictator invading a country, and the rights of Americans being stripped away at every turn, it’s important to take a second to remember a few wonderful moments that are also happening.
One such moment dates back to 2009, when a 5-year-old got the chance to visit the White House and meet then-President Barack Obama. His name is Jacob Philadelphia.
As covered over at The Washington Post, White House officials are, as of the time of writing, planning to cancel $10,000 in federal student loans per borrower for individuals who earn less than $150,000. For married couples filing jointly, the cap is $300,000. Both incomes are based on the previous year. It seems there is no additional income testing.
The decision is a win for the Republican-dominated redistricting commission, which passed five straight sets of legislative maps that couldn’t meet constitutional muster.
The former president appeared at the gun lobbying group’s convention just days after the deadly school shooting in Texas.
We were told today, in the latest version of events offered by authorities in Texas, that police left children locked in a classroom with a gunman for 78 minutes as they repeatedly called 911 begging for help, not knowing that their would-be rescuers were standing idly by.
Tomorrow, Johnny Depp and Amber Heard’s six-week defamation trial comes to a close. Depp is suing Heard, his ex-wife, for $50 million, accusing her of defaming him in a 2018 Washington Post op-ed in which she refers to herself—without naming him—as “a public figure representing domestic abuse.” Heard, in turn, filed a $100 million defamation counterclaim against Depp.The jury will likely issue a verdict next week.
This article contains spoilers for the first seven episodes of Stranger Things Season 4.Only on Netflix’s sci-fi horror drama Stranger Things have teenagers gotten used to fighting interdimensional demons. Early in Season 4, Robin (played by Maya Hawke) offers an explanation for her and her friends’ nonchalance in dealing with threats from the Upside Down, the desolate alternate realm that regularly sets monsters loose.