The Latest

“It appeared that everyone wanted to talk to a journalist from the United States with no visible axe to grind.”

Japan’s government announced that the new imperial era will be called “Reiwa,” but have not specified its meaning.

Olive farmers confront climate change in the West Bank

Teachers in Indiana were shot execution-style by pellet guns as part of an active-shooter training session conducted by the White County sheriff’s department.

What gets lost in the age of the algorithm

“I can’t take chances with my life.”

A federal appeals court ruled against a police officer who gave a Michigan woman a harsher ticket after she flipped him off.

Reconsidering the work of the notoriously elusive Cy Twombly

Christian Lorentzen on the decline of book reviewing; Rachel Nolan on the troubled legacy of Guatemalan adoptions; Lisa Wells on the fear of flying

The Brazilian president tweeted, “What is a golden shower?”

How to get there from here: two authors discuss their recent work and breaking out of the limits on the public discourse around race

“Whatever the current political momentum may be, what’s astonishing is that the oppression of less powerful people addressed not by a writer on the left but by the ‘reactionary’ Michel Houellebecq.”

Marking the unspeakable at the site of the Sand Creek Massacre

A black man became the director and president of a white-supremacist organization in the hopes of disbanding it.

No easy way out: the overpopulation of sea lions in Oregon demonstrates the need for humanity to live sustainably

“I am an underdog,” said presidential candidate Amy Klobuchar, who once ate a salad on an airplane with a comb and then ordered her aide clean it, at a Democratic Party fundraiser in Des Moines.

An ongoing racial and economic crisis in a republic that reflects our own

A plan for supplementary gruel must be rejected

Amid Berlin’s affordable housing shortage, urban gardens have been sowing unrest

Andrew Cockburn on Joe Biden’s disastrous legislative legacy; James Pogue on the myth of white genocide in South Africa; Sallie Tisdale on species in conflict on the Columbia River

Classes at a Catholic school in Durham, North Carolina, were canceled in anticipation of protests against a lesbian alumna, who had been invited to speak at a Black History Month event.

In sickness, only: on mercy killings, and the crisis in our health care system

“I can see nothing but a missed opportunity to inform the broader public about economic realities in our increasingly stratified country.”

North Korea’s Clothing Research Center announced that it has created clothing that contains “high-grade protein, amino acids, fruit juice, magnesium, iron, and calcium” and can therefore be eaten to avoid starvation.