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.
Read More
Illustrations of 315 Bowery in New York City, as it appeared between the 1940s and today.
Read MoreIn 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...
Read More
"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."
Read MoreSeventeen 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...
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"
Read More
Marilynne Robinson, Christopher Ketcham, Rivka Galchen, Stuart Franklin, and more
Read MoreEgypt 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...
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."
Read MoreA 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...
Read MoreSaudi 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...
Read More
Vietnam's sacred turtle dies; William Beebe watches turtles breed in Mexico
Read MoreThe 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...
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.
Read More
Charles Glass, James Harkin, Eileen Myles, Joseph O'Neill, and more.
Read 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.
Read MoreMarines 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.
Read More
Ammon Bundy takes over a wildlife refuge in Oregon; Christopher Ketcham traces the history of the Bureau of Land Management
Read More
From accounts of threats made against employees of the U.S. Forest Service and the Bureau of Land Management since 2010, published in 2014 by High Country News.
Read MoreIn Italy, where more than 30,000 people die annually because of air pollution, the town of San Vitaliano banned the use of wood-burning pizza ovens. A British man in Kyrgyzstan was arrested on suspicion of racial hatred after he compared a sausage dish to a horse’s penis, and a priest in the Philippines was suspended by the Catholic Church for using a hoverboard during Christmas Eve Mass. China’s Communist Party released an official rap song featuring President Xi Jinping. “Corruption,” he rapped, “must be punished.” Read more...
Read More
Christmas was banned in Somalia, and a ban on wearing "hats or clothes that resemble Santa Claus" continued in Brunei. Canada experienced a shortage of peppermint candy canes. A man in England dressed as Santa climbed through the window of a KFC wielding a knife, and it was reported that the number of people giving guns as Christmas gifts had increased since last year. "It is a significant gift," said a gun-shop owner, "to arm the people that you love."
Read More
Greenwich Village Then and Now, illustrations, by Julia Wertz, of three blocks in Manhattan’s Greenwich Village neighborhood, as they appeared in the 1930s and today. View all...
Read MoreFrance’s National Front party, whose president, Marine Le Pen, recently compared Muslims praying in public to Nazi occupiers and was acquitted of hate-speech charges, won a record 6.8 million votes in regional elections. Danish legislators considered a measure that would allow authorities to seize jewelry, cash, and other valuables from refugees. Public schools in Los Angeles and Nashua, New Hampshire, were closed because of bomb threats, and a poll found that 30 percent of Republican primary voters support bombing Agrabah, the fictional city from Disney’s Aladdin. Continue reading...
Read More
Donald Trump calls for a ban on Muslims entering the United States; Dorothy Thompson wonders who is most susceptible to Nazism.
Read More
Is George Orwell's Animal Farm based on the work of a nineteenth-century Russian writer?
Read More