What if I told you that a new Star Wars movie is in theaters this week? One directed by Jon Favreau, the steady hand at the tiller who helped launch the Marvel Cinematic Universe with Iron Man and the current stretch of Disney live-action remakes with The Jungle Book?

Since tobacco first arrived on the shores of England in the late 16th century, some Brits have wanted to eradicate it. Back in 1604, King James I was so alarmed about his country’s new smoking habit that he imposed a 4,000 percent tariff on the crop. That year, he wrote one of the world’s first anti-tobacco essays, declaring smoking “lothsome to the eye, hatefull to the Nose, harmefull to the braine, dangerous to the Lungs.

Ramon Espinosa / AP
People illuminate themselves with their phones while playing dominoes as a fire, set up by residents protesting against prolonged power outages, burns on a street in Havana, Cuba, on May 14, 2026. A Cuban energy official said recently that the nation had completely run out of diesel and fuel oil.

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Some of Donald Trump’s favorite world leaders have been scoundrels, bullies, and dictators. He keeps a picture of himself with the Russian autocrat Vladimir Putin on the wall of the White House. He claims to have fallen “in love” with the North Korean dictator Kim Jong Un.

Sam Altman did not seem to be having a good time. During the many days that he spent inside an Oakland courtroom, the normally cheery CEO of OpenAI—a guy who tends to be chipper even when declaring AI’s existential risks to humanity—appeared anxious, even distraught.

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Local election officials are the lifeblood of American democracy. They, and not the president or Congress, are most important for functional elections, and that’s what made Tina Peters’s crimes especially egregious.
Peters was the county clerk in Mesa County, Colorado, during the 2020 election.

In 1971, Richard Nixon announced his plan to visit Beijing—marking a geopolitical turning point, as the trip would be the first for a U.S. president in 25 years. Senate Majority Leader Mike Mansfield offered an observation that has since become a Washington commonplace. “Only a Republican, perhaps only a Nixon,” he told U.S. News & World Report, “could have made this break and gotten away with it.

By 10 a.m. yesterday, the line of people wishing to dedicate America to God was more than three hours long. They came ready with prayer flags to wave the Holy Spirit into action, and shofars to scatter demonic forces. They wore T-shirts declaring the sort of Christians they were. A muscular man wore one that read Prayer Warrior. A woman in cargo shorts announced that she was an Intercessor for America. An elderly woman wore one that read I Am the Weapon.