Students walk through a gate on the Harvard University campus. In a recent complaint, dozens of groups have alleged that the school's admissions process holds Asian-American applicants to an unfairly high standard. Elise Amendola/AP A group of Asian-American organizations — more than 60 in all —…

Police conduct an investigation at the scene of a shooting in Brooklyn’s East New York section on Tuesday.Photograph: Seth Wenig/AP At least 108 people were shot across three of America’s most crime-plagued cities during the holiday weekend, as violent new highs from a nationwide gun epidemic…

Federal prosecutors have announced a settlement with Cleveland in which the city’s police department has agreed to take steps to correct a pattern of abusive behavior by officers. The announcement makes Cleveland the first American city to have cut two such deals to rein in its police force. Federal…

Lake Mead, which forms the border between Nevada and Arizona, thirty miles from Las Vegas. The lake is fed by the Colorado and was last full in 1998. Since then, its volume has fallen by some sixty per cent, and the water level has dropped more than a hundred feet. Credit Photograph by Brian L.…

The number of Vietnamese cannabis factories in the UK has grown by 150% in the last two years.Illustration: Matt Murphy for the Observer H ien was 10 when he arrived in Britain. He did not know where he was or where he had been. He knew only that he was here to work. Since he emerged from the back…

During my time as an Army infantryman in Iraq, I heard my fellow troops express their frustration in many different ways. There are only so many four-letter words to go around, after all, before the mind takes a more creative bent. One expression stands out in my memory: the suggestion that we…

Our new issue, on what a President Bernie Sanders could actually do in office, is out now. Subscribe today to receive it ! Pamela Anderson on Europe’s Turmoil Pamela Anderson Srećko Horvat Introducing The ABCs of Capitalism Editors A Blueprint for Universal Childhood Megan Erickson Labour Has A Plan…

Reuters/Jason Reed NEW YORK (Reuters) - US Senator Elizabeth Warren is calling for U.S. Department of Labor hearings on whether banks accused of rigging foreign exchange markets should be allowed to manage retirement accounts, the Financial Times reported on Sunday. "When banks plead guilty to a…

Charter Communications is close to buying Time Warner Cable for about $55bn, two people familiar with the negotiations said.Photograph: Jeff Roberson/AP Charter Communications, the fourth largest cable provider in the US, has announced it is buying Time Warner Cable, the country’s second largest…

A bird rests in a tree at dusk near the Beaverdam Creek Reservoir in Loudoun County, Va. (Michael S. Williamson/The Washington Post) What if you could meditate like a Tibetan lama with no instruction whatsoever — and without having to subscribe to any religious beliefs? People hear a question like…

The Scripps National Spelling Bee plays out this week and while you may be excitedly watching the best spellers in the US battle it out in Maryland, halfway around the world in China, Beijing's kids are competing for a different kind of title: China’s Best English Speaker. The Star of Outlook…

Details of MPs’ expenses scandals and controversies are being removed from Wikipedia from inside the Houses of Parliament, a newspaper investigation has claimed. The Telegraph found that before the general election earlier this month, allegations of an arrest, fraud, and an extramarital affair…

Why are there so few courses in Soviet literature at American universities? A Soviet poster from Albert Rhys Williams’s Through the Russian Revolution , 1920. When I was completing a master’s in comp lit at Oxford, I kept coming across a curious lapse—while most of my British peers had read at least…

Daniel Ek, C.E.O. of Spotify. A contract showed a deal between Spotify and Sony, adding to the debate on how much control labels have over streaming sites and how much artists earn. Credit Shannon Stapleton/Reuters Online streaming may be the music industry’s biggest source of growth. But as Sony is…

Stiv Wilson, an environmentalist who lives on his boat, has helped lead the fight against tiny plastic balls called microbeads. Credit Jason Henry for The New York Times Stiv Wilson is not much of an exfoliator. Mr. Wilson, a 42-year-old environmental advocate, lives on a sailboat, wears flip-flops…

The generation that tech forgot

Jony Ive promoted to new role of chief design officer Ive will spend more time on design and travelling Ive lieutenants promoted to key new roles British-born Richard Howarth becomes Apple's head of industrial design The coolest address in the universe I stood last week at the entrance to 1 Infinite…

"Everything is first-class," says Nerd-in-Chief Steve Wozniak of Dubai, as we sit down to chat on the sidelines of this month's Gartner Symposium at the Madinat Arena. "The United States used to talk, when I was growing up, like that's what we were. The US would look like this if we didn't spend all…

When I started working on understanding social systems, privacy really wasn’t on my mind. (I generally want to write down equations, understand the universe and all that). But one of the central realizations arising from our SensibleDTU experiment is that privacy needs to be an important part of…

Microsoft is officially confirming today that it’s bringing Cortana to iOS and Android. The software giant is planning to release separate apps for each mobile operating system to enable its digital assistant to run outside of Windows. Microsoft is only providing an early look at those apps today,…

Travelling the country's lakes and rivers in a canoe is an iconic Canadian pastime but Alexandru Duru just might change all that with his new Guinness World Record-breaking hovercraft. To tell you the truth I always thought (flying) was something possible, - Alexandru Duru, new world-record holder…

MONROE -- John Forbes Nash Jr., the brilliant Princeton University mathematician whose life story was the subject of the film "A Beautiful Mind," was killed with his wife Alicia on Saturday in a crash on the New Jersey Turnpike. Nash was 86. Alicia Nash was 82. The couple lived in Princeton…

UPDATE (Oct. 4, 10:43 a.m.): You’re reading a vintage FiveThirtyEight story. Since this article was first published in May, the world’s oldest living person has changed. It is now Susannah Mushatt Jones, a 116-year-old who lives in Brooklyn. As the oldest person in the world, Gertrude Weaver was…

the ride-hailing company had embarked on a multi-year project to replace human drivers with computers

Mark Zuckerberg, the Facebook chief, at the Mobile World Congress in March. LONDON — One arm of the European Union is looking into whether Facebook and other tech companies unfairly favor their own services over those of rivals. At least five data protection watchdogs across the region are…

This was the most-read story on BBC Earth in 2015. Here is another chance to read it. It could happen to anyone. Maybe you're out trying to find a new habitable planet for the human race, or maybe you're just on a long walk and you slip. Whatever the circumstances, at some point we all find…

Home > Stock Market News Today's Stock Market News & Analysis Why Reactions To Earnings Aren't Always What You Expect By Martin Tillier Sometimes when you think a stock will zig after earnings, it zags. Here's why. 3 Cheap Growth Stocks You Can Buy Right Now By Motley Fool Not all growth stocks are…

Labeled cattle (Photo: WFAA) CONNECT Cattle (Photo: WFAA) SANTA TERESA — At a busy border crossing for livestock those who buy and sell cattle from Mexico are pleased with the World Trade Organization ruling against the U.S. meat labeling requirement. "The cattle has been for most part of their…

Thanks to Edward Snowden, we know that the National Security Agency collects the phone records of every American in order to keep the country safe from terrorism. But for the past eight months a group of artists claiming to work for the NSA on "a freelance, pro bono basis" have been recording…

Nicole Angemi, aka @mrs_angemi , is a pathologist's assistant in real life. But online she helms one of Instagram's most controversial accounts, a first-hand portal into the world of organ dissections and autopsies. It's a world that very few of us know up close and personally. At first glance,…

Oliver Leung Contributor Editor’s note: Oliver Leung is an economist specializing in evaluating emerging technology and connecting startups with Fortune 500 companies. Federal Reserve Chairwoman Janet Yellen weighed in on the prospects of an equity bubble at a meeting with International Monetary…

The house’s owners have built a vast basement that amounts to an underground village. Illustration by Michael Kirkham Witanhurst, London’s largest private house, was built between 1913 and 1920 on an eleven-acre plot in Highgate, a wealthy hilltop neighborhood north of the city center. First owned…

There's no getting around the strangeness of a map that shows the most distinctive cause of death in each of our 50 states and the District of Columbia. In Texas, it's tuberculosis. In Maine, it's the flu. And in Nevada, it's the ominous "legal intervention." But what does it mean to label a cause…

Chile’s Communist Party Rejects Intervention in Venezuela Nigeria: Early Tally Shows Buhari in Lead, Opposition Rejects 86% Votes For New Constitution in Cuba US VP Pence Leads Lima Group, Pushes for More Severe Blockade Venezuela: EU Spurns Violent Intervention for Peaceful Solution Campaign…

Supporters of the endangered Mexican gray wolf in Santa Fe, New Mexico, on Tuesday demanded that state commissioners reverse their recent decision to close down a wolf recovery program. The program, which has operated for 17 years at a New Mexico ranch owned by billionaire media mogul Ted Turner,…

Tanhuato de Guerrero (Mexico) (AFP) - Puddles of blood and bullet shells are some of the remnants of an intense gunfight on a western Mexico ranch that killed 42 criminal suspects and one police officer. The authorities say superior training and equipment explains the one-sided death toll in one of…

“Black lives matter.” For the past nine months, this rallying cry has permeated street corners, protests, tweets, news conferences, and even the cover of Time magazine . Last August, the killing of 18-year-old Michael Brown by a Ferguson, Missouri, police officer kick-started the efforts of…

Young women deserve better.Photograph: Thomas Cristofoletti/Getty Images/Flickr RM F or as long as college rape has been in the spotlight , there have been detractors insisting that the prevalence and severity of sexual violence on campus isn’t really that bad or that the steps taken to stop sexual…

PAJU, South Korea — A group of international women’s activists made a rare crossing from North Korea into South Korea on Sunday, hailing the trip as a “first step in the right direction” toward bridging divisions between the estranged countries. But the women — led by Gloria Steinem, the pioneering…