* West Virginia declares state of emergency after a train crashes, leaking Bakken crude oil into the Kanawha River. * Boston's contract prohibits non-union workers; it's instead paying prisoner pennies to shovel record snowfall. * Citing State Dept. guidelines, UMass is not accepting Iranian students for programs in
* Everything ISIS does is calibrated to bring apocalyptic prophecy to fruition; that prophecy says Jordan has to be next. * In long-secular Turkey, parents confront a new reality: Islamic education. * The recent, odd history of USB dead drops—in Iran, they've been used for weed purchasing tips. * Silk
* Chelsea Manning to be first Army veteran provided transgender therapy. * Including the financial world. * FBI director discusses unconscious racial biases, believing America hasn't tackled race after Ferguson. * New York City goes a record 10 days without a murder, and criminologists can't say why exactly. * Forecasters warn
* Leaders of Ukraine and Russia agree to tentative truce to begin this weekend. * See also: Ukraine borders porous enough to allow 30 billion cigarettes to sneak through. * If Obama gets the nod to fight the Islamic State, it'll be a ringing endorsement of unlimited presidential war making. * "
Better to have loved and lost—and best to have written an essay about it. Surviving the Russian melodrama of young love.
Love of food can be love’s most sincere form—especially when avocados are involved—but also bittersweet if paired with departure.
* An estimated 20,000 foreign fighters have traveled to Iraq and Syria to join IS, including 150 from the US. * Obama to withdraw most troops from West Africa and declare the five-month Ebola effort a success. * Trumpeting supremacy clause Obama confident Supreme Court will raise LGBT rights to a
* Controversy reignites over Italy's end of search and rescue after 29 migrants die aboard a coast guard boat. * Bulging with immigrants and without jobs for the young, Eastern Europe's economies need to make up ground. * Since 2006 a North Carolina state agency—the only of its
Where there’s smoke, there’s smuggling. Before the Ukrainian border became a dangerous war zone, it was a profitable bootlegging arena.
Over seven years, an artist watches a beloved forest suffer a “massive tree mortality event,” then gradually recover and become something new. The result: a lesson in entropic beauty.
