Category: Politics

Leah Libresco is a statistician and former newswriter at FiveThirtyEight, a data journalism site. She is the author of “Arriving at Amen.” Before I started researching gun deaths, gun-control policy used to frustrate me. I wished the National Rifle Association would stop blocking common-sense gun-control reforms such as banning assault weapons, restricting silencers, shrinking magazine sizes […]

Florida Sen. Marco Rubio is demanding West Point officials revoke the commission of an officer who posted photos of himself with pro-communist messages hidden under his graduation uniform, calling it an “extreme embarrassment” for the military. In a letter to acting Army Secretary Ryan McCarthy Tuesday, the Republican senator also questioned whether service officials ignored […]

Despite his remarks on Twitter over the weekend, President Trump is still backing the pursuit of a diplomatic end to heightening tensions with Kim Jong un’s regime in North Korea, according to Secretary of Defense James Mattis. “President Trump’s guidance to both Secretary Tillerson and me has been very clear that we would pursue the diplomatic […]

In recent months, the US news media has been abuzz with more reports about Russian espionage and disinformation tactics than at any other period in recent memory.  At times, watching cable news networks almost sounds like we are back in the 1960’s at the height of the Cold War.  Much of this is a reaction […]

Associates of President Trump and his company have turned over documents to federal investigators that reveal two previously unreported contacts from Russia during the 2016 campaign, according to people familiar with the matter. In one case, Trump’s personal attorney and a business associate exchanged emails weeks before the Republican National Convention about the lawyer possibly […]

The leader of Catalonia insisted on Monday that Sunday’s independence referendum, though marred by clashes and rejected by the Spanish government, had earned his region the right to a separate state and that he would press ahead to make the vote binding. Without specifying when, Carles Puigdemont, the Catalan leader, said he would submit the result for approval […]

While NASA has had some big announcements to come out of its space enterprises in recent years, they have primarily come as the result of long-standing missions that were launched during an era when the organization was better funded, or perhaps better at using its limited funding, to get new experiments off the ground.  In […]

Although President Trump has repeatedly stated that going to war with North Korea is not his preferred option, his statements on Sunday would seem to indicate that it’s the only outcome he’s now open to pursuing. Donald Trump once again took to the social media platform Twitter to convey his foreign policy stance, claiming that American […]

Iraq’s Kurdish people voted overwhelmingly in favor of independence from Iraq, with over 92 percent of the voters opting for an independence referendum, the Kurdish region’s election commission released in a statement. Voter turnout was more than 72 percent. However, many of the Kurds are now facing being stranded after the Baghdad government in response […]

A study reported this week in JAMA Pediatrics found that children who watched a movie excerpt in which characters used firearms were more interested in playing with a handgun than children who watched an expurgated version from which images of firearms had been excised. The researchers think their findings could be important in reducing fatal firearm accidents involving children. […]

A new law banning the wearing of Muslim headscarves will go into effect this Sunday in Austria. The law also bans other non-religious items, such as medical face masks and clown face paint, except under specific circumstances. The law affects the wear of these items in public, to include schools and public transportation. Austria is […]

Lt. Gen. Jay Silveria, the head of the U.S. Air Force Academy, addressed a recent incident in which racial slurs were found written on the dormitory message boards of five African-American cadets at the preparatory school. Appearing before the academy’s 4,000 cadets and 1,500 staff members, the General delivered a speech that made it clear […]