Today's Liberal News

What Is the Meaning of Mystical Experience?

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What would it be like to wake up one day with the ability to greet the world with warmth, patience, grace, and affection? This is what happens to the main character in the Pulitzer Prize winner Ayad Akhtar’s magnificent new novel, The Radiance. It is a tale of spiritual transformation in which Akhtar gives a detailed description of our inner landscapes.

The Kennedy Center Is the Most Terrifying Building in America

Don’t you dare go inside the Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts! It’s much too dangerous. They have had murders there for 39 straight years—every night, and some matinees too. And they still haven’t caught the culprit. Nightly murders, with groups of middle schoolers sitting there, applauding. Murders in a hair salon, of all places! Sheer madness.
It is not just the murder capital of Washington. Revolutions happen there, frequently.

The Hidden State Russia Is Building Inside Ukraine

The world has watched Russia’s war against Ukraine largely through the movement of its front lines. But behind those lines, Moscow is building something more durable: a hidden state inside Ukraine. Across the Russian-occupied parts of Donetsk, Luhansk, Zaporizhzhia, and Kherson, Russian institutions are steadily replacing Ukrainian ones and reshaping the routines of everyday life.
Schools teach Russian curricula.

“Grotesque”: Ex-Israeli Negotiator Daniel Levy on Netanyahu’s U.N. Speech & Israel’s Impunity

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu addressed a half-empty chamber at the United Nations General Assembly on Thursday, after dozens of delegations walked out in protest at the start of his speech. Netanyahu assailed his critics as “antisemites,” defended his country’s conduct in Gaza, the West Bank, Lebanon and Syria, and lavished praise on President Trump for joining Israel’s strikes on Iran.

“Stop Arming Israel”: 100+ Arrested at Jewish Voice for Peace Sit-In Outside Netanyahu U.N. Speech

Over 100 protesters were arrested near the United Nations in New York on Thursday ahead of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s speech to the General Assembly. The sit-in, organized by Jewish Voice for Peace, denounced Netanyahu for perpetrating a genocide against Palestinians in Gaza, building more illegal settlements in the West Bank, occupying parts of Lebanon and bombing Iran alongside the United States.

The Pacific Is a Mess of Hurricanes

If you could look down at the Pacific Ocean right now, you’d see three hurricanes spinning in a row, between 15 and 20 degrees north. Furthest east is Polo, an unusually strong hurricane that has been churning off the southern coast of Mexico for nearly a week. To its west, Odalys, once a Category 4 hurricane, is slowly weakening in the open ocean.

What Israel Knew Before October 7

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Less than two weeks before October 7, 2023, Egypt’s top spy flew to Israel to deliver a dire warning: Hamas appeared to be mobilizing for a major attack. According to officials who spoke with the Atlantic staff writer Vivian Salama, Cairo’s intelligence chief recommended that the Israeli government offer economic concessions to Hamas in order to avert conflict.

How to Define the Fuzzy Phases of Life

This is an edition of The Wonder Reader, a newsletter in which our editors recommend a set of stories to spark your curiosity and fill you with delight. Sign up here to get it every Saturday morning.
When, exactly, does middle age begin and end? This past summer, my colleague Julie Beck tried to figure it out. Public opinion didn’t exactly offer a consensus: “In one survey, the median response put middle age as lasting from 40 to 60,” Beck writes.

Xi’s Visit to Washington

Editor’s Note: Washington Week With The Atlantic is a partnership between NewsHour Productions, WETA, and The Atlantic airing every Friday on PBS stations nationwide. Check your local listings, watch full episodes here, or listen to the weekly podcast here.
Chinese President Xi Jinping arrived in Washington, D.C., this week for a state visit.

Modern Media Weaken the Presidency

Donald Trump’s second term represents a new, bolder version of the “imperial presidency” that many feared half a century ago. Trump prefers a maximalist approach to presidential power. And the Supreme Court, by granting presidents immunity from most prosecution and subduing what were once thought of as independent agencies, has lent him some support.