Throughout the year, parts of East Africa have been suffering record-setting waves of locust swarms. In the past few months, even more swarms have dramatically struck parts of Yemen, Pakistan, and India. Farmers and communities are fearful of the damage to crops and rangeland, harming income and food supplies, all while dealing with the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic.
A star has gone missing.Not in our own Milky Way, but in a galaxy about 75 million light-years away. The star in question is so hot that it glows crystal blue, and it shines a couple million times brighter than the star we know best, our sun. Even as stars go, it’s massive. Astronomers have studied it for nearly two decades, so it was pretty disconcerting when, one day last year, they looked at the latest observations and realized they couldn’t find it anymore.
Editor’s Note: Every Wednesday, James Hamblin takes questions from readers about health-related curiosities, concerns, and obsessions. Have one? Email him at paging.dr.hamblin@theatlantic.com.Dear Dr. Hamblin,I’m a college professor, but homeschooling my 6-year-old is proving to be one of the most challenging things I have ever done. I’m currently failing. Naturally, I have a lot of questions as schools are discussing reopening in the fall.
Parenting advice on criticizing co-parents, teenage know-it-alls, and pandemic weddings.
Carrie Lam, Hong Kong’s chief executive, stood in front of reporters yesterday for the most consequential press conference of her time leading the city. Prior to Lam stepping behind the podium, news had begun to stream in that officials in Beijing had passed a national-security law to be imposed on Hong Kong, the most significant altering of the ostensibly autonomous territory’s status since it was handed back to China from Britain in 1997.
As the United States experiences the world’s worst outbreak of COVID-19, we speak with Ed Yong, science writer for The Atlantic, who warned of the country’s unpreparedness for a viral outbreak in 2018. Now he says “it’s truly shocking and disgraceful” how badly the pandemic has been handled in the United States, and blames a lack of federal leadership for most of the damage.
As a surge of a progressive candidates of color see victories in Democratic primaries across the country, we speak with former Bronx middle school principal Jamaal Bowman about his upset victory over New York Congressmember Eliot Engel, the 16-term Foreign Affairs Committee chair. Bowman ran on a Green New Deal, Medicare for All platform and recently joined protests demanding an end to racism and police brutality.
They must know it’s offensive, right?
But not before my father—who ran the infamous amusement park for 20 years—tested it on his employees.
Comforting genre fiction without over-the-top plot lines.
COVID 19 is spiking, immigration is impossible, and a German fintech company is collapsing.
The coronavirus threat put on hold a billion-dollar research program focused on new forms of addiction treatment.
The vote was aimed at shoring up Democratic support in swing districts that fueled the party’s House takeover in 2018.
That puts the price of a five-day treatment course at $2,340 per patient for people enrolled in federal health programs.
An extension would give taxpayers until Oct. 15 to file their returns, though they would still have to pay what they owe by July 15.
The acting chair of the CEA will leave Trump without another senior economist as discussions start about a new economic aid package.
“We have a long road ahead of us to get those people back to work,” Jerome Powell said earlier this week.
“Significant uncertainty remains about the timing and strength of the recovery,” Powell said.
He said that “almost all businesses” understand the $600 additional benefit is “a disincentive.
Businesswoman Lauren Boebert, who runs a gun-themed restaurant where servers openly carry firearms, has defeated Colorado Rep. Scott Tipton in a stunning upset in Tuesday’s Republican primary. With most votes counted, Boebert was leading 54-46, prompting Tipton to concede.
The organizers of a Saturday rally in Olympia, Washington, to protest the state’s anti-COVID stay-at-home orders—including the militiamen of 3% of Washington—were happy to have what they thought was a conservative PAC step up and finance the event. The PAC paid for facilities, outhouses, security, and promotion, and it all seemed good.
The president’s all-caps declaration on Twitter brought out his critics.
The Trump administration, under the watch of White House aide and noted white supremacist Stephen Miller, has taken a sledgehammer to the U.S. refugee program, decimating annual admissions from 110,000 set by the Obama administration to a historic low of just 18,000. On World Refugee Day this past weekend, presumptive Democratic presidential nominee Joe Biden pledged to go even beyond the number set by the Obama administration.
Donald Trump has been nursing yet another grudge as he squats in the Oval Office: the Supreme Court that keeps thwarting him. He wants a fix figuring that a last-minute Supreme Court appointment would give him a big political boost ahead of November’s election. At least, that’s what CNN’s sources are saying.
Though it was buried in yet another frantic news day, on Monday the Supreme Court allowed the Trump administration to resume federal executions by letting stand an appeals court ruling allowing the same. After a 17-year pause, the 60 prisoners on federal death row will now face new execution dates.
It was Attorney General William Barr, of course, who had indicated that his department would be lifting the hiatus.
The Republican governor said “social interactions” among younger Floridians — and not the state’s reopening — was driving the spike in coronavirus cases.
Under President Eisenhower’s executive order, government offices must fly the standard U.S. ensign. Trump doesn’t at his “Southern White House.
It might have been the sight of a muscled roller skater in a lacy tutu, or of a thong-clad twerker commanding an on-the-move cheering circle, or of a giant papier-mâché puppet of Janelle Monáe that sparked the epiphany.
“The president does read and he also consumes intelligence verbally,” the White House press secretary insisted.
