The Latest

Syrian brothers seek refuge in Belfast

"I think that the metaphor of seeing ethics in terms of a supermarket array of consumption decisions is all too pervasive in contemporary society," says philosopher Paul B. Thompson

Tens of thousands of people signed a petition calling for the impeachment of a judge in Montana who sentenced a man to 60 days in jail for raping his 12-year-old daughter, and a man in California was sentenced to 1,503 years in prison for raping his teenage daughter. A couple at a Cracker Barrel restaurant in Greenville, South Carolina, left their waitress a note telling her “the woman’s place is in the home,” in lieu of a tip. Hundreds of women in yoga pants marched through Barrington, Rhode Island, to defend their right to wear the garment, and Trump vowed to sue every woman accusing him of sexual assault. “I look so forward to doing that,” he said. Read more...

Untitled, c. 1979, a watercolor by Maria Lassnig, whose work is on view at Petzel, in New York City. Artwork © Maria Lassnig Foundation. Courtesy Petzel, New York City

Illustrations of Syrians struggling to survive in the civil war–torn city of Aleppo, by Jason Novak.

Accusations surfaced that Trump had kissed a former Miss USA contestant, a makeup artist, and a Trump Tower receptionist without their consent; groped a People magazine reporter, a former contestant on his television show, a stranger he was sitting next to at a nightclub, and a stranger sitting next to him in first class on a flight; told a group of 14-year-old girls he would be dating them in “a couple of years”; and entered the dressing rooms of Miss Teen USA contestants while they were changing. Read more...

Thomas Frank on how the media exterminates political reform, Trudy Lieberman on the fate of Medicare, Chris Offutt on the changing face of Appalachia, a story by Stephen Dixon, and more

The Shiyan Lake Ecologic Park in China unveiled its “exciting and adventurous” glass-walled bathrooms, and a public restroom in Virginia was consumed by a sinkhole.Officials in Indiana asked motorists for heightened caution during deer-mating season, and snake catchers in Australia observed a rare snake orgy in an empty pool. In Germany, the seven-year hunt for a man responsible for slashing inflatable backyard pools ended with the arrest of a 27-year-old man, whose apartment also contained multiple inflatable mattresses. “We cannot rule out that the man has some kind of fetish,” said a police spokesman. Read more...

A luncheon with the Republican establishment

Fighting Zika in San Salvador

Hackers took control of a digital billboard in Jakarta and played a pornographic film, a church in Western Australia had its windows broken by a gang of children between the ages of four and eight who were armed with small rocks, and a Pittsburgh man was given 30 days to catch a wild rooster on his property before being penalized by the city. “I called the zoo,” the man said in court, “but they said they didn’t have the capabilities to catch a rooster.” Read more...

“The suffering cannot disappear without a trace, we need to understand how and why,” says Svetlana Alexievich, the 2015 Nobel laureate in literature and author of Secondhand Time.

Robert Gumpert discusses "Division Street," his photo essay on homelessness in San Francisco, which was published in the October issue of Harper's Magazine

Notes from Uganda's disputed presidential election

Illustrations of Carroll Gardens, Brooklyn, as it appeared between 1928 and today.

The president of a Crime Stoppers chapter in Canada was fired for allegedly participating in the cultivation of cannabis, police in Mexico found a van outfitted with a ten-foot-long air cannon used to fire 60-pound bales of marijuana over the U.S. border, and an employee of the Royal Canadian Mint was suspected of having smuggled out an estimated $179,015 in “cookie-sized nuggets” of gold by coating them in Vaseline and hiding them in his rectum. Read more...

Donald Trump advocates for stop-and-frisk; Petra Bartosiewicz considers the history of William Bratton's policing policies

A museum's misguided attempt to rescue the past

Harper's Magazine writer David Gargill on General Electric's failed Hudson River cleanup

In Minnesota, an Islamic State militant dressed as a private security guard stabbed nine people at a shopping mall, before being shot and killed in a Macy’s by an off-duty police officer. Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump conceded that U.S. president Barack Obama was born in America, Jane Goodall compared Trump’s behavior to that of male chimpanzees performing dominance rituals, a dead Republican won his primary race for a seat in the New York State Assembly, and a deceased Siamese cat was sent a California voter-registration application in the mail. Read more...

Robert Sullivan on the cult of Hamilton, Walter Kirn on the Republican National Convention, Rachel Nolan on El Salvador's anti-abortion machinery, a story by Joyce Carol Oates, and more

From How to Be Perfect: An Illustrated Guide, with words by Ron Padgett and illustrations by Jason Novak. The book was published this month by Coffee House Press. Padgett's 2011 book, How Long, was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize in poetry. Jason Novak's illustrations have appeared in the New Yorker, the Paris Review, and on this website.

A tractor-trailer crashed on I-95 in Delaware, spilling 8 million blank pennies; a tractor-trailer caught fire on I-68 in Maryland, burning bacon and ribs; and a new ATM in Ohio was dispensing pizzas rather than money. New York mayor Bill de Blasio announced that 50,000 oysters were being distributed on beds made of porcelain from recycled toilets. “This oyster bed,” said the mayor, “will serve multiple purposes.” Read more...

Why the Hudson River will never run clean

The art of protest

North Korea fired three ballistic missiles toward the Sea of Japan. JetBlue put an unaccompanied five-year-old boy on the wrong plane, sending him to Boston instead of New York; the SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket carrying a satellite leased by Facebook exploded on the launchpad in Cape Canaveral; and police in Florida arrested a man who posted his own “Wanted of the Week” mugshot on Facebook.A two-year-old girl was cited for littering by the Washington, D.C., Department of Public Works, a public library in Alabama announced plans to enforce jail sentences for overdue books, and convicted rapist Brock Turner was released from prison after serving three months of his six-month sentence. Read more...

Road-tripping to the end of the world

The quest to control the weather

In New Jersey, a newspaper published two obituaries of the same man, one by his wife and one by a woman claiming to be his girlfriend. A minor-league baseball player hit a grand slam, smashing the windshield of his own truck, which was parked outside the stadium. KFC released an “Extra Crispy” sunscreen that smells like fried chicken, and Colonel Sanders’s nephew may have accidentally leaked the company’s secret spice blend to a reporter. A family in Turkey got food poisoning at a dinner they organized to celebrate their recovery from food poisoning. Read more...

From an interview with a girl in a reintegration program for former child soldiers in Colombia.