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An attempt to simplify federal financial-aid forms led to a bureaucratic mess. That may shape where students go to college—and whether they enroll at all.

Even the most well-read World War II enthusiast is likely unaware of one major military operation that happened in 1945. It involved Royal Air Force bombers, 24 Sherman tanks, and 36,000 troops—some of them British, the rest Indian and Nepalese Gurkhas under British command. More than 600 of these soldiers died, including a British brigadier general.
Despite the year, the fighting happened after the war ended. It took place in Indonesia.

My mom died six years ago, a few hours after I sat on the edge of her bed at her nursing home in Georgia and talked with her for the last time. My wife, Alix, and I were staying with my brother and his wife, who lived just down the road. My brother got the phone call not long after midnight. He woke me up, and we went down to the nursing home and walked the dim, quiet hallway to her room. She was in her bed, cold and still. I touched her face. But I didn’t cry.

Maybe you started running for fitness, or because it seemed like a good way to make friends. Or perhaps it was a distraction from an uninspiring and underpaid job. Maybe you wanted an outlet for the frustration you felt at being single and watching your friends couple up. But no matter the reason you started, at some point it became more than a hobby.

As any fan of tennis can inform you, one of the sport’s chief joys is how rivalries between players can develop and mature over decades. Certain matchups are larded with history, friendship, and sometimes real animosity that can be far more personal than in any team competition. Luca Guadagnino’s new film, Challengers, injects romance into this dynamic, as the on-court battle between two players quickly comes to include a woman they both love.

Updated at 11:15 ET on April 22, 2024
Yesterday just before midnight, word goes out, tent to tent, student protester to student protester—a viral warning: Intruders have entered the “liberated zone,” that swath of manicured grass where hundreds of students and their supporters at what they fancy as the People’s University for Palestine sit around tents and conduct workshops about demilitarizing education and and fighting settler colonialism and genocide.

This is an edition of The Atlantic Daily, a newsletter that guides you through the biggest stories of the day, helps you discover new ideas, and recommends the best in culture. Sign up for it here.
The passage of the Ukrainian aid package by the House this past weekend is an extraordinary sign of political courage. But in the party of Donald Trump, this win for democracy may soon seem like a mirage.

The web has become so interwoven with everyday life that it is easy to forget what an extraordinary accomplishment and treasure it is. In just a few decades, much of human knowledge has been collectively written up and made available to anyone with an internet connection.
But all of this is coming to an end. The advent of AI threatens to destroy the complex online ecosystem that allows writers, artists, and other creators to reach human audiences.

Recently, a man visiting his parents’ newly renovated home recognized an eerily familiar white curve in their tile floor. To the man, a dentist, it looked just like a jawbone. He could even count the teeth—one, two, three, four, five, at least. They seemed much like the ones he stares at all day at work.
The jawbone appeared at once very humanlike and very old, and the dentist took his suspicions to Reddit. Could it be that his parents’ floor tile contains a rare human fossil? Quite possibly.