Photographs by Paccarik OrueAlla Weinstein did not invent the floating wind turbine. This is something she wanted to make clear early in our Zoom call, as if she were worried I’d give her too much credit. “I don’t need to invent. There are plenty of inventions,” she said. “But a lot of inventions die on the grapevine if they aren’t carried through.” What Weinstein does is carry them through.For that, she does want credit.
For most of us, today is just Thursday. For astronomers, it’s practically a holy day. Today is an event that comes only once a decade, and it’s of cosmic importance—literally. Today, a special committee has revealed the priorities for the next decade of American astronomy, like a synod giving word from on high.
The Atlantic is announcing the promotion of Krystle Champagne-Norwood to executive producer of AtlanticLIVE. As the editorial leader of the LIVE team, Champagne-Norwood will develop the editorial vision for The Atlantic’s events and will find new avenues for journalistic expression through this work. She has been with The Atlantic since 2019 and in that time has shaped dozens of its most high-profile events, including the recently completed Atlantic Festival.
Before the state of Oklahoma put John Marion Grant through the 12-minute ordeal of convulsions, vomiting, and heaving that eventually concluded with the 60-year-old’s death, it gave him a choice: How would he like to die?There were a number of options.
Jenna Ryan, a Texas real estate agent who flew to D.C. on a private plane and livestreamed in the Capitol, got 60 days in prison.
We speak with Harjeet Singh, senior adviser with the Climate Action Network, who is at the U.N. climate summit in Glasgow. Activists like Singh are pressuring world leaders to join the Fossil Fuel Non-Proliferation Treaty, which would supplement the Paris Agreement by directly targeting the fossil fuel industry and outlining clear actions that every country could take to drastically decrease carbon emissions.
We speak to Farhana Yamin, one of the most prominent climate lawyers in Britain, who has been deeply involved in international climate negotiations for decades, including the landmark 2015 Paris Agreement, and has also engaged in direct action to effect change. Yamin is currently working with the Climate Vulnerable Forum, a group that represents 48 of the countries most threatened by the climate crisis, at the U.N. climate summit in Glasgow.
We speak to Mohamed Nasheed, the former president of the low-lying island nation of the Maldives, at the U.N. climate summit in Glasgow. Nasheed is one of the world’s leading climate advocates, who once held a cabinet meeting underwater to bring attention to the threat of global warming, pledged to make the Maldives the first carbon-neutral country and installed solar panels on the roof of his presidential residence.
CDC Director Rochelle Walensky quickly endorsed the use of shots, which could become available as early as Wednesday.
Only about 34 percent of pregnant adults are fully vaccinated and more than 200 have died of the virus, according to the CDC.
The death toll is about equal to the populations of Los Angeles and San Francisco combined.
Though the Court split 5-4 in declining to block the unique ban before it took effect in September, the justices now have before them evidence of the sweeping impact it’s had.
Members of the aerospace, distribution, defense and trucking sectors are warning the Biden administration they will not be able to meet the vaccine deadline.
Weaker-than-projected economic growth in the last quarter, a jobs slowdown and supply chain snags that are likely to continue into next year are sending warning signs for the economy.
It’s not just Republicans who are assigning responsibility to the administration for the rocky economic recovery, polls show.
Thursday’s report from the Commerce Department estimated that the nation’s gross domestic product declined sharply from the 6%-plus annual growth rates of each of the previous two quarters.
The most recent Consumer Price Index showed prices have gone up 5.4 percent in the past 12 months.
In the news today: It’s the day after an election day, which means it’s time for each of the losing sides to explain how Actually the results vindicate whatever they believed all along. Not even the infamously “centrist” Third Way is willing to buy last night’s conservative Democratic spin, though.
You may have noticed, what with the Texas attorney general being under indictment for over half a decade and counting, sitting senators dabbling in insider trading as a side gig, and a certain pumpkin-headed Dear Leader being able to incite a crowd into violent insurrection with not a single resulting consequence, that “laws” in the United States generally no longer apply to rich people, powerful people, or anyone who has the personal phone numbers of either.
We won! OK, so I’m not from Pittsburgh and have never even been to the city, but when I learned the news, albeit expected, that voters had elected State Rep. Ed Gainey as the first Black mayor to lead the city, it felt deeply personal.
As a child, Gainey lived in a Pittsburgh housing project. After his political ascension to the state Senate, his sister, a mother of three, was murdered in her own city.
The Biden administration and the state of California are working on a medium- to long-term solution to the supply chain problems affecting the nation, but in the short term—extending well into 2022—problems will persist.
President Joe Biden announced 24/7 operations at the Port of Los Angeles last month in an effort to ease backups there by moving an addition 3,500 containers a week.
The trend of firsts from the last election continues: People of color are making historic wins nationwide, and by a significant margin. Securing more than 66% of the vote, Aftab Pureval was elected as Cincinnati’s mayor Tuesday. His win makes history as the first Asian American Pacific Islander (AAPI) to be elected the city’s mayor. According to the Cincinnati Enquirer, he is also the only AAPI mayor in the midwest.
The Texas senator then tweeted a clip from his interview containing his false claim about Merrick Garland, but not the fact-check that followed.
Gov.-elect Glenn Youngkin (R) painted himself as a moderate on the campaign trail, but advocates are worried he’s harboring more extreme views on abortion.
President Joe Biden says the Democrats’ setbacks in Tuesday’s elections underscore that the party needs to “produce for the American people.
Schools may not be the ticket to victory that a lot of Republicans hope they will be, despite what the top-line results of last night’s election seem to suggest. For the past several months, Glenn Youngkin has blanketed Virginia cable networks, mailboxes, and radio airwaves with advertisements about dysfunction in the state’s public schools. His Democratic opponent, Terry McAuliffe, did not believe parents should have any say in what their children learned, Youngkin would declare.
Just a day after the Supreme Court heard oral arguments on S.B. 8, Ohio Republicans introduced a copycat bill to ban abortion at any point in a pregnancy.
The long-awaited move signals both optimism about the pace of job growth and wariness about price surges that have pushed inflation up to its highest level in decades.
The COP26 international climate-change negotiations have just begun in Glasgow, Scotland, and the vibes are … ambivalent. The leaders of Russia and China haven’t bothered to attend, but did promise to help end deforestation by 2030—though many observers are skeptical that they will keep their word.
In the 20th century, the largest animals that have ever existed almost stopped existing. Baleen whales—the group that includes blue, fin, and humpback whales—had long been hunted, but as whaling went industrial, hunts became massacres. With explosive-tipped harpoons that were fired from cannons and factory ships that could process carcasses at sea, whalers slaughtered the giants for their oil, which was used to light lamps, lubricate cars, and make margarine.