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The story behind the billionaire's fast food of choice

A waiter at a Brooklyn IHOP was accused of giving away $3,000 worth of free soda. “I am,” he said, “Robin Hood.” A fallen tree derailed a commuter train in California, a man in Oregon was killed when an alder tree fell on his car, and it was reported than an Ohio woman was arrested for driving with a 15-foot tree stuck in her hood. A six-year-old boy was shot at a birthday party in Georgia, and a gun advocate in Florida was shot in the back by her four-year-old son. "Even my 4 year old gets jacked up,” she had posted online shortly before the shooting, “to target shoot with the .22.” Read more...

Dan Baum, Ralph Nader, Thomas Frank, Don DeLillo, Robert P. Baird, Emily Witt, and more

"After only three primaries—almost a tie in Iowa, an emphatic victory for Sanders in New Hampshire, and 52.6 percent for Hillary in Nevada—Mrs. Clinton found herself being guaranteed the nomination by the newspaper of record."

A police dog in Contra Costa County located a burglary suspect hiding in a doghouse. In China, a maintenance crew discovered the body of a woman in an elevator they had disabled a month earlier, and an American man in Mozambique found a piece of debris that may be a fragment of Malaysia Airlines flight MH370, which disappeared over the Indian Ocean two years ago. In Dallas, a man riding a hoverboard shot and wounded driver who offered him a ride. “The suspect then fled the location,” wrote the police in a press release, “on foot.” Read more...

"Hillary Clinton wasn’t really a progressive, or even a liberal Democrat, until Bernie Sanders decided to run for president."

A woman in Turkey filed for divorce after her husband sued her for swearing at a television broadcast of Turkish president Recep Tayyip Erdogan, a Saudi man who divorced his four wives and attempted to marry four new wives was ordered to remarry his original wives and pay them a new dowry of about $43,000, a hairdresser in Lancashire stabbed her boyfriend to death for adding “loads of girls” on Facebook, a woman in Germany choked to death after her lover left the room to feed his dog and smoke a cigarette after placing in her mouth a cucumber that the two had been using as a sex toy, and psychologists found that people in relationships rarely change their behaviors over time. Read more...

Window of Ancient Sirens (1979), an assemblage by Betye Saar, whose work is on view as part of A Constellation, an exhibition at The Studio Museum in Harlem, in New York City.

Illustrations of 315 Bowery in New York City, as it appeared between the 1940s and today.

In Utah, a Mormon youth-group leader found the decapitated head of a snake inside a can of green beans, and in Brazil a capuchin monkey was captured by a local fire department after video emerged in which it drinks alcohol from glasses around a bar and then chases patrons with a foot-long knife. In New Jersey, a mail carrier called his postmaster for help after several wild turkeys trapped him in his truck. “I got a carrier that’s being attacked by wild turkeys,” said the postmaster in a 911 call, “and won’t let him deliver the mail.” Read more...

Hillary Clinton, liberal virtue, and the cult of the microloan

"France's efforts to expand and enshrine the emergency laws in the constitution have created a sense that the legal framework of the French Republic, and all that it stands for, is under threat."

Seventeen member states of the International Syria Support Group agreed to a “cessation of hostilities” in Syria, and, following the announcement, Syrian president Bashar al-Assad promised to keep fighting, Turkey stepped up its bombing campaign against the Kurds in Syria, and Russia continued flying sorties. Russian prime minister Dmitry Medvedev described Russia’s relationship with the West as “a new Cold War,” and a noted opponent of President Vladimir Putin had cake thrown in his face by a gang of men at a Moscow restaurant. Read more...

"Enough poison of various kinds was spread on the Western range in a single year during the 1960s to kill every man, woman, and child west of the Mississippi"

Marilynne Robinson, Christopher Ketcham, Rivka Galchen, Stuart Franklin, and more

Egypt banned a German tourist from the country for climbing the Giza pyramid, and the body of an Italian student was discovered with signs of torture in a Cairo suburb. A New York City police officer testified in court that he was unable to perform CPR on a gunshot victim because the academy had helped him cheat on his certification test, and an officer in Chicago who fatally shot an unarmed black teenager sued the boy’s family for $10 million, claiming emotional trauma. In Peru, a 51-year-old activist became the first former sex worker to run for the national legislature. “I’m going to put order,” she said, “in that big brothel which is Congress.” Read more...

"For the first three years of François Hollande's presidency, he was neither malicious nor dangerous. And yet, since the terrorist attack on the Bataclan, it’s been a whole different story."

A teenager in Melbourne was charged with conspiring to prepare for a terrorist attack after he was recorded discussing plans to paint the Islamic State flag on a kangaroo, pack the animal full of explosives, and release it in the vicinity of police officers. Two 71-year-old Americans sailing from Norway to the United States were rescued, for the ninth time, after their boat caught fire from a candle they left burning while they were out buying groceries. “This fire is definitely not typical,” said one of the men. Read more...

A visit to the Chicago Architecture Biennial

Saudi Arabia’s highest-ranking cleric issued a fatwa condemning the game of chess, claiming it causes “enmity and hatred.” The Danish town of Randers voted to require pork in school lunches. A ten-year-old Muslim student in Lancashire, England, was questioned by police after he misspelled the word “terraced” and wrote instead that he lived in a “terrorist house”; and the U.K. Home Office misspelled the word “language” in an announcement of new English tests for immigrants. Read more...

Vietnam's sacred turtle dies; William Beebe watches turtles breed in Mexico

The city of Portland unveiled the Poopmaster 6000, which will clean crow droppings from city sidewalks. Researchers in Germany developed tiny bionic “spermbots” that escort slow-swimming sperm to eggs, and a man in Britain claimed to have fathered at least 800 children by selling his sperm on Facebook. "They’re just the ones I know of," he said. Read more...

Three people win the largest Powerball jackpot in U.S. history; Nathaniel Rich profiles a woman who won millions in the Texas lottery on four separate occasions.

Charles Glass, James Harkin, Eileen Myles, Joseph O'Neill, and more.

A selection of queries submitted by telephone and in person to the New York Public Library’s Reference and Research Services between 1940 and 1989.

Marines in Mexico captured Joaquín “El Chapo” Guzmán, the fugitive leader of the drug cartel responsible for supplying the United States with the majority of its cocaine and heroin.