People Have Plenty to Say About the First Presidential Alert
On Wednesday afternoon FEMA conducted its first test of the the nationwide Presidential alert and social media was full of mixed reactions. The Presidential Alert is similar to the state-level systems that let police and local authorities send out AMBER Alerts and weather warnings. The biggest difference is it’s scale. At 2:18 p.m. 225 million smart phones in the United States received a Presi...
2m Oct 04, 2018
2m
7-Year-Old Boy Invents Wolf Holiday and People Are Already Onboard
The holidays are fast approaching, but this year people aren’t just excited to celebrate Thanksgiving, Hannukkah, Kwanza, Christmas, and the New Year. This year, though, a considerable number of people online are particularly looking forward to celebrating Wolfenoot. Wolfenoot is a brand-new holiday created by a 7-year old boy in New Zealand. According to his mother, author Jax Goss, Wolfenoot...
2m Oct 04, 2018
2m
Mitch McConnell Sets Friday Test Vote on Kavanaugh Nomination
(WASHINGTON) — The Senate braced for a crucial initial vote Friday on Brett Kavanaugh's tottering Supreme Court nomination after Majority Leader Mitch McConnell set his polarized chamber on a schedule to decide an election-season battle that has consumed the nation. A showdown roll call over confirmation seemed likely over the weekend. McConnell, R-Ky.
9m Oct 04, 2018
9m
Vladimir Putin’s Charm Offensive Kicks Off Another Year With 2019 Calendar
The 2019 Putin VVP calendar, so-named for Russian President Vladimir Putin's initials, has hit the stands. This year's take on the annual diary revives portrayals of the Russian president as a consummate diplomat and outdoorsman, suggesting that Putin, 65, is a president for all seasons. The calendar kicks off January with an image of a bare-chested Putin dipping into the icy waters of Lake Se...
2m Oct 04, 2018
2m
The Little-Known Story of Donald Trump’s First Tweet
The opening shot of the war was fired on May 4, 2009. By all appearances, it had nothing to do with war. “Be sure to tune in and watch Donald Trump on Late Night with David Letterman as he presents the Top Ten List tonight!” When @realDonaldTrump blasted his first bland tweet into the ether, there was little to distinguish the account from the horde of other brands, corporations, and celebrit...
9m Oct 03, 2018
9m
Justin Timberlake, RuPaul and 16 Other Celebrities With Books Out This Fall
With midterm elections only a few months away, it’s no surprise that prominent political figures are speaking out by publishing tell-alls this fall, with books coming from the likes of Michelle Obama, Bernie Sanders, Steve Scalise and Julian Castro in the next couple months. But just because November is around the corner, it doesn’t mean that fall memoirs are completely dominated by politics — ...
10m Oct 03, 2018
10m
Rising Star National Guard Veteran Drops Out of Race Citing PTSD and Depression
Afghanistan War veteran and rising Democrat Jason Kander has dropped out of the Kansas City, Mo., mayoral race after revealing he has been struggling with PTSD. In a note posted on his website Tuesday, Kander revealed that he has decided to seek help for mental health issues and will be taking a step back from politics for the time being. Kander served as an Army Intelligence Officer in Afghan...
4m Oct 03, 2018
4m
Nobel Laureate Donna Strickland on the Challenges for Women in Science
Physicist Donna Strickland, a self-described "laser jock" who prefers to keep a low profile, won the Nobel Prize in physics Tuesday, becoming the third woman ever to do so — an achievement she described as "surreal." "It’s hard for me to take it in right now," Strickland tells TIME. "But I’m trying to enjoy it.
5m Oct 03, 2018
5m
225 Million Phones Will Receive a Presidential Alert Wednesday. Here's What to Know
On Wednesday afternoon, nearly every smart phone in America will blare and vibrate with an emergency alert – the first ever test of the national Presidential Alert system. The Presidential Alert is similar to the state-level systems that let police and local authorities send out AMBER Alerts and weather warnings. The biggest difference is scale.
10m Oct 03, 2018
10m
President Trump Mocked Kavanaugh Accuser Christine Blasey Ford at a Mississippi Rally
At a campaign rally in Mississippi on Tuesday, President Donald Trump repeatedly ridiculed Christine Blasey Ford, who has accused Supreme Court nominee Brett Kavanaugh of sexually assaulting her when they were both teenagers. The audience laughed as Trump parodied Ford's tearful testimony before the Senate Judiciary Committee last week. Just days ago, the president said he found that same test...
2m Oct 03, 2018
2m
Your Dog Is Probably Dumber Than You Think, a New Study Says
Your dog may be a good boy—but he's not as smart as you think, a new research article suggests. Dogs have a unique set of cognitive abilities, but they're not inherently smarter than other animals, says the new paper, which was published in the journal Learning & Behavior. "Dogs are special, but they're not exceptional," says co-author Britta Osthaus, a senior lecturer in psychology at Christ ...
4m Oct 03, 2018
4m
Missing Chinese Actress Fan Bingbing Fined $70 Million in Mysterious Tax Evasion Case
Fan Bingbing, one of China's most popular entertainers, has been fined nearly $70 million for tax evasion, state media reported Wednesday in the first official announcement about the actress since she mysteriously disappeared in early July. Fan was ordered to pay "hundred of millions" of yuan, Xinhua reported, without further details. Reuters, citing Chinese state media, said the actress' fin...
3m Oct 03, 2018
3m
Kate Middleton Returns From Maternity Leave to Garden With Kids for a Good Cause
She's back at it — and in the garden. Catherine, Duchess of Cambridge is off on an outdoorsy adventure for her first big public solo engagement since giving birth to Prince Louis on April 23, ending her maternity leave with a day of hanging out with kids in a London field center. Kate Middleton popped by Sayers Croft Forest School and Wildlife Garden on Tuesday, a center where children can go ...
2m Oct 03, 2018
2m
What Kanye West Got Right and Wrong About 13th Amendment, According to Historians
Kanye West has once again gotten himself in hot water with his views on American history. But, while his take on the past can be perplexing, his recent statements offer a window into a real historical and political debate. The rapper — who is now going by the shortened stage name Ye — has tended to oversimplify things, at the very least, when he's tweeted about the history of race in America.
8m Oct 02, 2018
8m
New Cancer Treatments Just Won Two Scientists a Nobel Prize. Here’s How They Work
It wasn’t the Nobel Committee that reached James Allison first on Monday to inform him that he had won the coveted annual prize in Physiology or Medicine. It was his son who broke the news with a 5:30 am phone call. Minutes later, a Swedish reporter reached him before the committee could. “I was like, 'Oh my God, it happened,'” Allison says to TIME. “I’m just in shock, I guess.
7m Oct 02, 2018
7m
The Early Christians Were Focused on Solidarity Across Race, Class and Gender. Then Things Changed
Jesus is remembered once to have said, “Who made me a divider? I’m not a divider, am I?” That line, found in the Gospel of Thomas, may strike an ironic note today: nothing, it seems, divides us more than Jesus — believer from non-believer; evangelical from liberal; Christian from Jew or Muslim. Religion divides us along ethnic lines and by class, and it imposes distinctions in male and female g...
6m Oct 02, 2018
6m
Fresh Earthquakes Strike Disaster-Hit Indonesia
Earthquakes continued to rattle Indonesia Tuesday, with fresh tremors registered in disaster-wracked Sulawesi and in another island to the south, according to the U.S. Geological Survey (USGS). The latest jolts come four days after a powerful quake and tsunami claimed at least 1,234 lives, officials say. Tuesday's quakes struck in rapid succession early in the morning. In Sumba, an island of ...
4m Oct 02, 2018
4m
Column: Late Night Has Way Too Many Men. It Showed During the Kavanaugh Hearings
Like so many women in America, Samantha Bee had a rough time getting through last week. She took the stage to host the most recent episode of her Wednesday-night talk show, Full Frontal, dressed in a funereal black suit, her tense posture like a full-body cringe. “I’ve been doing a lot of Carrie-ing to get through it,” Bee said, referring to (what else?) the Brett Kavanaugh hearings.
9m Oct 02, 2018
9m
A Record 800,000 People Registered to Vote on National Voter Registration Day
A record number of people registered to vote in the midterm elections on National Voter Registration Day last week, surpassing the previous record set during the 2016 presidential campaign. More than 800,000 people registered to vote this year as part of National Voter Registration Day, which fell on Sept. 25. The corresponding campaign had aimed to register 300,000 people.
3m Oct 02, 2018
3m
Trump Administration Halts Visas for Unmarried Same-Sex Partners of Diplomats
A new Trump administration visa policy appears to give the partners of same-sex diplomats a difficult ultimatum: get married, or get out. As of Monday, the U.S. State Department will no longer issue visas to the same-sex partners of foreign diplomats or staffers of U.S.-based international organizations like the United Nations, unless they are married. According to a notice posted on the Stat...
3m Oct 02, 2018
3m
Trump's NAFTA Replacement Mostly Keeps the Status Quo
On the campaign trail, Donald Trump harshly criticized free trade deals, threatening to withdraw the U.S. from the Trans-Pacific Partnership as well as the North American Free Trade Agreement, which he called "the worst trade deal." He withdrew the U.S. from the TPP within days of taking office, and over the weekend announced a new deal, called the U.S.-Mexico-Canada Agreement, or USMCA, to re...
5m Oct 02, 2018
5m
A Good Marriage May Help You Live Longer. Here’s Why
If you have a happy marriage, "'til death do us part" may be a long ways off. Married people who rated their unions as "very happy" or "pretty happy" had roughly 20% lower odds of dying early than people who said their marriages were "not too happy," according to a recent study published in the journal Health Psychology. The work expands on existing studies that have linked marriage to a numbe...
3m Oct 02, 2018
3m
Japanese Politician Kicked Out of a Meeting for Sucking a Cough Drop
A Japanese politician who was kicked out of an assembly session last year after bringing her 7-month-old baby to the chambers was forced to leave again — this time, for sucking on a cough drop during assembly. Yuka Ogata, a member of the Kumamoto city assembly in south-western Japan, was speaking at the podium when confronted by the assembly's chairman about having something in her mouth.
2m Oct 02, 2018
2m
A Rogue Bat Flapped Around Trump’s Rally to Announce Halloween Season to Everyone
As crowds gathered for President Donald Trump's rally Monday night, one animal seemed to officially usher in the start of October. Before the real action began, what appears to be a bat flapped its wings around Freedom Hall in Johnson City, Tennessee. Perhaps out of their element, security had the difficult task of trying to contain the nocturnal animal. For those inside the event, the bat ma...
2m Oct 02, 2018
2m
Canada and the U.S. Have Reached a Deal on NAFTA
(TORONTO) — Canada and the United States reached a deal Sunday night for Canada to stay in a free trade pact with the U.S. and Mexico. In a joint statement late Sunday, U.S. Trade Representative Robert Lighthizer and Canadian Foreign Affairs Minister Chrystia Freeland said the agreement "will strengthen the middle class, and create good, well-paying jobs and new opportunities for the nearly ha...
4m Oct 01, 2018
4m
Trump Aims to Use Kavanaugh Fight to Bring Republicans to the Polls
With the midterms just 37 days away, President Donald Trump sought to boost Republican turnout with a return to the aggressive, theatrical rallies he held on the campaign trail in 2016. Speaking to a raucous audience in Wheeling, West Virginia, Saturday night, Trump called Democrats "the party of crime," joked that he and North Korean dictator Kim Jong Un "fell in love" and sought to put the c...
5m Oct 01, 2018
5m
North Korea's Kim Jong Un Sent Puppies as a Peace Gift to the South
North Korean leader Kim Jong Un has dispatched a precious peace offering to South Korean President Moon Jae In — two Pungsan puppies. The gifts come as the latest sign of warning ties between the historic foes. The snow-white dogs, one male and one female, were sent south last week as a "symbol of peace," according to South Korea's Blue House. Kim reportedly offered the canines during the thir...
2m Oct 01, 2018
2m
Jimmy Kimmel Has People on the Street Give Questionable Answers to Your Most Googled Questions
It was Google's 20th anniversary of its existence Thursday — so Jimmy Kimmel wanted to celebrate the all-important search engine by remembering what it was like before we had access to the world's information at our fingertips daily. "The traditional gift for a 20th anniversary is china," Kimmel noted during his show on Thursday night. "Unfortunately Google is banned in China, so we can't do t...
2m Oct 01, 2018
2m
How to Have Your Kid Go to College — But Not Go Broke
High school students are now back to classes, resuming the quest for a college education and the good life beyond. But it seems too many of them are mortgaging their futures to get there. At $1.4 trillion, student loans now represent the second largest pile of total household debt—topped only by mortgages. For parents hoping to provide their children with more bountiful lives than their own, th...
4m Sep 30, 2018
4m
The Boeing 747 Is Turning 50. Here’s How the ‘Queen of the Skies’ Came to Reign Over Air Travel
On Sept. 30, 1968, the first Boeing 747 rolled out of its custom-built assembly plant in Everett, Washington. From the beginning, everything about the plane once known as the “queen of the skies” was big. It was the first wide-body “jumbo jet” ever built, involving about 50,000 construction workers, mechanics, engineers and others who took it from an idea to the air in just 16 months in the la...
7m Sep 30, 2018
7m
Texas Attorney General Supports Expulsion of Student Who Refused to Stand for Pledge of Allegiance
A Texas school district has won the support of the state’s Attorney General after administrators expelled a black student who refused to stand for the Pledge of Allegiance. India Landry was expelled from Windfern High School in October 2017 following an extended protest against the Pledge of Allegiance, citing racial injustice. “This is not the NFL,” she was reportedly told by a school official.
2m Sep 30, 2018
2m
We’ve Been Drilling into the Ocean Floor for 50 Years. Here’s What We’ve Learned So Far
It’s stunning but true that we know more about the surface of the moon than about the Earth’s ocean floor. Much of what we do know has come from scientific ocean drilling – the systematic collection of core samples from the deep seabed. This revolutionary process began 50 years ago, when the drilling vessel Glomar Challenger sailed into the Gulf of Mexico on August 11, 1968 on the first expedit...
7m Sep 30, 2018
7m
Jeopardy Contestant Wins Hearts and Minds With On-Air Proposal
A Jeopardy! contestant won in the category of love when he proposed to his girlfriend during Thursday night's show. Michael Pascuzzi of Florida swapped out the traditional interview with host Alex Trebek to pop the question to his girlfriend, Maria Shafer, who was in the television audience. "I just wanted to say one quick thing, and ask Maria Shafer, right there, if she would make me a winne...
1m Sep 30, 2018
1m
The True History of America’s Private Prison Industry
Before founding the Corrections Corporation of America, a $1.8 billion private prison corporation now known as CoreCivic, Terrell Don Hutto ran a cotton plantation the size of Manhattan. There, mostly black convicts were forced to pick cotton from dawn to dusk for no pay. It was 1967 and the Beatles’ “All you need is love” was a hit, but the men in the fields sang songs with lyrics like “Old Ma...
10m Sep 30, 2018
10m
Why a Cy Young Award for Jacob deGrom Would Be a Victory for Common Sense
Debates about sports awards are often dreary affairs. Why should the question about which multi-millionaire pro will hoist an individual trophy at the end of the season work anyone into a lather? The arguments are subjective. Someone wins the MVP or Cy Young Award. Then life moves on. The race for the 2018 National League Cy Young award, between Jacob deGrom of the New York Mets and Max Scherz...
5m Sep 30, 2018
5m
Aretha Franklin Never Saw This Picture of Herself: The Story Behind a Previously Unpublished Portrait
When the Queen of Soul Aretha Franklin died last month at the age of 76, she was called a "diva to the end," and proved that point by going out in a gold-plated casket. But that doesn't mean Franklin didn't have a down-to-earth side, too — and that's what's on display in the photo seen here. It was taken in 1977 but was never published until now. "She did her own makeup.
3m Sep 30, 2018
3m
People Like You More Than You Think, a New Study Suggests
You may not get a second chance at making a first impression — but a recent study suggests that you probably don't need one anyway. The research, published in the journal Psychological Science, finds that people often underestimate how much another person likes them after they meet for the first time.
4m Sep 30, 2018
4m
Stacey Cunningham Is the First Female President of the NYSE
Stacey Cunningham always knew she was one of few women to ever work on the trading floor — but she didn't let that deter her from pursuing a career in a male-dominated industry. This year, she became the first female president of the New York Stock Exchange — the largest stock exchange in the world, which, notably, didn't have a first female member until 1967 — about 175 years after it was fou...
2m Sep 30, 2018
2m
India Has Been Collecting Eye Scans and Fingerprint Records From Every Citizen. Here’s What to Know
Wednesday marked a significant milestone for the world’s largest biometric ID system, India's Aadhaar program. When the program launched in 2009, India set out to achieve a world-first: giving every citizen a unique, biometrically-verifiable identification number.
9m Sep 30, 2018
9m
9 Things You Should Never Keep at Your Desk
Organization comes naturally to some, but for others, it's just not in their nature. Maybe you're too busy to clean up, or perhaps organized chaos works well for you. Regardless, a messy desk can negatively impact productivity and your ability to perform tasks efficiently at work, according to a study published in The Harvard Business Review.
5m Sep 30, 2018
5m
The Story Behind That Striking Photo of Jeff Flake After His Kavanaugh Vote Bombshell
One of the reasons I moved from California to Washington, D.C., a year ago to photograph politics in the Donald Trump era was a curiosity about what happens outside of the frame of the television screen, such as the interactions between the staffers and the senators, and the senators with each other.
5m Sep 30, 2018
5m
‘It’s So Much Money.’ Paralympic Athletes Just Scored a Major Victory for Equal Pay
When Oksana Masters heard last week that the U.S. Olympic Committee voted to start giving Paralympians the same medal bonuses as Olympians, she burst into tears. An eight-time Paralympic medalist who was once so poor during training for the 2014 Games that she slept in her car, she was shocked by the news. “I can’t really believe it actually happened,” Masters, a skier, cyclist and rower, tell...
7m Sep 29, 2018
7m
NASA Has Been Visiting Strange, New Worlds for 60 Years. See the Places It’s Gone
For a species that was handed what might be the best of all possible planets, humans have been oddly anxious to leave it. Our itch to venture into space has been with us ever since we first realized that the points of light in the sky are actually places in the sky. Recognizing a place, for us, is enough to want to visit that place. For millennia, that wish remained just a wish.
4m Sep 29, 2018
4m
Inside the Republican Plan to Win Hispanic Voters—And Battleground States
Rick Scott arrived in a sweltering warehouse on Orlando's east side and began thanking the crowd in Spanish. "Gracias por su apoyo," the Republican Senate hopeful told voters and employees of this flooring business founded 20 years ago by Puerto Rican immigrants. "Es mi oportunidad para conocer a mis amigos." Thank you for your support. It's my chance to meet my friends. The message was clear ...
4m Sep 28, 2018
4m
Legal Expert: The Kavanaugh Vote Won't Solve America’s Deeper Supreme Court Problems
The circus surrounding the Supreme Court nomination of Judge Brett Kavanaugh has shown beyond any doubt how deeply divided America is. And when the dust settles, we’ll still be divided. So too will be the Court. To see why, and how we got here, we need to start at the beginning. In a nutshell, our founding documents were designed mainly to secure liberty under limited government, especially af...
5m Sep 28, 2018
5m
‘My Only Sin.’ Philippine President Rodrigo Duterte Admits Extrajudicial Killings Occurred
Philippine President Rodrigo Duterte has acknowledged for the first time that extrajudicial killings occurred on his watch, a concession that could buttress two criminal complaints filed against him at the International Criminal Court. In what was described as a rambling speech to government officials outside the presidential palace Thursday, Duterte conceded that his "only sin is the extrajud...
3m Sep 28, 2018
3m
Author Khaled Hosseini Hopes His New Book About Refugees Helps Inspire Empathy
The Kite Runner author on sea crossings, the power of storytelling and the importance of explaining harsh realities to children. What inspired you to write Sea Prayer, your new book about a refugee father preparing to make a perilous journey across the Mediterranean? Ever since I saw the photo of Alan Kurdi, the 3-year-old Syrian boy whose body washed up on a beach in Turkey in 2015, I have w...
4m Sep 28, 2018
4m
Why Should Users Trust Facebook? It’s a Hard Question for Mark Zuckerberg to Answer
On Friday morning, Facebook executives faced yet another painful news cycle. Three days earlier, the engineering team discovered a security issue affecting roughly 50 million user accounts. Out of an abundance of caution, the company said on Friday as it revealed the hack, Facebook took action to shore up security not only for those accounts but 40 million others as well.
5m Sep 28, 2018
5m
Key Senators Face Intense Pressure to Decide the Kavanaugh Vote
The women cornered Sen. Jeff Flake in the elevator, effectively trapping him in the stationary car while they demanded he answer their question. Did he believe Supreme Court nominee Brett Kavanaugh’s denials that Kavanaugh had sexually assaulted a woman while they were in high school? Flake, an Arizona Republican, had minutes before announced he was voting to confirm Kavanaugh and all he could...
7m Sep 28, 2018
7m
Only Tiffany Haddish Could Make Night School Worth Watching
It was only last summer, in Malcolm D. Lee's ebullient and raunchy Girls Trip, that Tiffany Haddish surfed into view like a comic Venus on the half shell: She was so vibrant, she made every scene sing. Her timing, both loose-limbed and sure-footed, meant she could ride the wave of even the most ridiculous joke with ease. Haddish is now in high demand, but her glorious--and deserved--ascent doe...
3m Sep 28, 2018
3m