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When I lived in New York City a decade ago, I couldn’t spend 10 minutes outside without speaking to someone. That’s the thing I loved about the place: how New Yorkers will kibbitz and comment and carry on a conversation in line for pizza, on the sidewalk or in the subway; ask for directions or compliment a particularly awesome hat of someone they have never met, without any awkwardness.

Today, you can spend a week in New York, shopping, traveling, eating and working, and never utter a sound to another human being, or even take your headphones off.

It shouldn’t be this way. Engagement with strangers is at the core of our social contract.

The White House will be illuminated in orange Friday night in honor of National Gun Violence Awareness Day, as the nation has been shaken by a recent string of deadly mass shootings.

Several other government buildings -- including California's Capitol dome and City Hall in New York City -- will also be lit up in orange over the weekend.

President Joe Biden on Thursday issued an appeal for stricter gun laws, including a ban on assault weapons, tougher background check laws and a higher minimum age of purchase.

DAKAR, Senegal — With many of the world’s poorest countries facing alarming levels of hunger and starvation, the leader of the African Union is set to meet with President Vladimir V. Putin on Friday and urge him to lift Russia’s blockade on urgently needed cereals and fertilizer from Ukraine.

Warnings by the United Nations that Russia’s naval blockade in Ukraine could lead to famines around the world, and accusations by Ukrainian and Western leaders that Mr. Putin is weaponizing a major source of the world’s food supply, have so far produced limited results. Millions of to

ns of grain remain stuck in Ukraine; Mr. Putin has suggested that this would change if the West lifted sanctions imposed on Moscow after the invasion.

Disinfection is back.

“Bleach is my friend right now,” says Annette Cameron, a pediatrician at Yale School of Medicine, who spent the first half of this week spraying and sloshing the potent chemical all over her home. It’s one of the few tools she has to combat norovirus, the nasty gut pathogen that her 15-year-old son was recently shedding in gobs.

norovirus has seeded outbreaks in several countries, including the United Kingdom, Canada, and the United States. Last week, the U.K. Health Security Agency announced that laboratory reports of the virus had risen to levels 66 percent higher than what’s typical this time of year. Especially hard-hit are Brits 65 and older, who are falling ill at rates that “haven’t been seen in over a decade.”

Kids are unwell. Worse than ever recorded, according to two new reports tracing depression and suicidal thoughts and behaviors in teens.

if we want to make any lasting difference, it is us, the adults, who need an intervention.

Rates of bullying were increasing in the state even in 2018, and researchers at Drake University found some forms of it significantly correlated with feeling sad or hopeless and attempting suicide.

The rise of the influencer Andrew Tate has vindicated the decision to show Eton College pupils a controversial video on masculinity, according to the master who was sacked for doing so.

It also stated that “male aggression is a biological fact” and aired concerns about women competing in sports against transgender women.

“I think Tate is a symptom of what’s currently going wrong regarding the teaching of boys in schools,” Knowland said from his home in Stowmarket, Suffolk.

Nurses don’t dispute that patients deserve compassion and respect, but many feel that their roles are misunderstood and their expertise undervalued; as Duke repeatedly told me, people don’t respect nurses like they do doctors. As a result, nurses are leaving hospitals in droves. And they’re establishing new careers, not just in health care but as creatives and entrepreneurs.

Duke argues that nurses are especially fed up and burned out. And yet, as caretakers, nobody expects them to put their physical and emotional well-being first. But that’s starting to change. Once a lone voice, Duke is now a representative one.

Nurses make up the nation’s largest body of health-care workers, with three times as many RNs as physicians

A confidential European Union military report calls for continuing a controversial EU program to train and equip Libya’s coast guard and navy despite growing concerns about their treatment of migrants, a mounting death toll at sea, and the continued lack of any central authority in the North African nation.

Europe’s determination to support Libya in the interception and return of tens of thousands of men, women and children to Libya, where they face insufferable abuse.

Hundreds of thousands of migrants hoping to reach Europe have made their way through Libya, where a lucrative trafficking and smuggling business has flourished in a country without a functioning government,

The risk posed by bacteria and viruses remains much lower today than it was for the majority of human history. In the America of 1900, for example, nearly 1 percent of people died from infectious diseases every year, about an order of magnitude higher than today.

yet Americans exposed to such dangers chose to engage in a full social life, judging that the risk of pestilence—however serious—did not justify forgoing human connection.

Just as we are willing to take on calculated risks in other areas of life, so we should be willing to tolerate some risk of infectious disease. When you set out to drive across the country, you know that you could get into an accident. You might get hurt, and so might another driver, or even a child crossing the road. But that does not create a moral obligation to stay put for the rest of your life.

America’s plutocrats are transforming themselves into hereditary dynasties, thanks to a prolonged campaign against inheritance taxes (or “death taxes” as they have been ingeniously dubbed).

The research firm Cerulli estimates that almost half of the estimated $72.6 trillion that will be transferred to the next generation between 2020 and 2045 will come from the richest 1.5% of households. Welcome to the world of trillion-dollar trust fund babies.

The rise of such dynasties clashes with America’s fundamental belief in equal opportunity and upward mobility. It leads to social closure as the children of the privileged hoard positions at the top of society.

what is happening right now in Ukraine—a nation being mauled by a brutal regime yet still willing to stand and to fight—is proof that honor and courage matter. They can stir hearts in powerful ways, shaking them out of complacency and even cynicism.

what drove support for Ukraine were the human virtues being displayed in a terrible human drama.

It was seeing ordinary people—including the young and the elderly—act in extraordinary ways to defend the country they love, against overwhelming odds. It was seeing people do the right thing at the risk of death when nearly every instinct within them must have been screaming: Do what you have to do to survive, even if survival, though not dishonorable, is less honorable.

Spies in Russia’s infamous security apparatus were kept in the dark about President Putin’s plan to invade Ukraine, according to a whistleblower who described the war as a “total failure” that could be compared only to the collapse of Nazi Germany.

A report thought to be by an analyst in the FSB, the successor agency to the KGB, said that the Russian dead could already number 10,000. The Russian defence ministry has acknowledged the deaths of only 498 of its soldiers in Ukraine.

The report said the FSB was being blamed for the failure of the invasion but had been given no warning of it and was unprepared to deal with the effects of crippling sanctions.

SALT LAKE CITY — Utah lawmakers voted Friday to override GOP Gov. Spencer Cox's veto of legislation banning transgender youth athletes from playing on girls teams — a move that comes amid a nationwide culture war over transgender issues. Before the veto, the ban received support from a majority of Utah lawmakers, but fell short of the two-thirds needed to override it. Its sponsors on Friday successfully flipped 10 Republicans in the House and five in the Senate who had previously voted against the proposal.

Salt Lake City is set to host the NBA All-Star game in February 2023. League spokesman Mike Bass has said the league is "working closely" with the Jazz on the matter.

I cannot support this bill. I cannot support the veto override and if it costs me my seat so be it. I will do the right thing, as I always do," said Republican Sen. Daniel Thatcher. With the override of Cox's veto, Utah becomes the 12th state to enact some sort of ban on transgender kids in school sports. The state's law takes effect July 1.

Celebrated every March, Women's History Month honors the often-overlooked contributions of women in history, society, and culture. This year's theme — "Women Providing Healing, Promoting Hope"— salutes both the brave frontline workers of the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic and the countless women who have provided healing and hope throughout history.

Elizabeth Blackwell, who made history in 1849 by becoming the first woman to earn a medical degree in America, did not even want to be a doctor. She was happy being a teacher — a more "suitable" career for women in the 19th century. She only decided to pursue medicine after a close friend, who was dying of cancer, said her experience would have been better under the care of a female physician.

In 1857, Blackwell recruited her sister Emily — the third woman to earn a medical degree in America — and a physician friend to establish the New York Infirmary for Indigent Women and Children. The free clinic provided female doctors with much-needed training and experience. She also founded the Women's Medical College of the New York Infirmary — the first four-year all-female medical college. The pioneer continued to advocate for women in medicine till her death in 1910 at age 89. Since 2016, Blackwell's birthday — February 3 — has been designated National Women Physicians Day.

More than 79 million people in the U.S. have had confirmed coronavirus infections and more than 960,000 have died of COVID-19. In the graphics below, explore the trends in your state. View the data via state-by-state charts (immediately below), a heat map that shows state risk levels, a table of trends in new infections over four weeks, and a map of case and death totals.

The above charts show average new cases per 100,000 people for each state over the last year. In most cases, three waves are visible in these charts: last winter's surge, the delta wave of late summer, and the ongoing omicron wave. In many places the omicron wave has already passed the peak of either previous wave.

To show trends, the table below shows the change in average new cases per day in each state, week over week for the last 28 days. States marked in shades of red have growing outbreaks; those in shades of green, are declining.

The US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention is expected to follow soon after with what's known as a permissive recommendation, which means that the shots will not be officially recommended but may be given to people who want them, said a source who spoke to CNN on the condition of anonymity since they had not been given permission to discuss the details with reporters.

"There are solid data from Israel for age 60+ (the only group reported on to date) for enhanced protection (vs severe illness) out to 3 months compared with 3 doses. It is reasonable to extend that and provide it as an option, since the 3rd dose has pronounced benefit in age 50+," Topol wrote in an email to CNN.

Dr. Eric Rubin, editor in chief of The New England Journal of Medicine who sits on the FDA's VRBPAC, said he hadn't yet seen enough data on fourth doses to make a determination about whether they are needed for anyone beyond those who are already recommended to get them -- adults who are severely immune deficient."The only data that I've seen has been for participants followed for just a few weeks. The most important information is going to be how well a fourth dose protects highly vulnerable people against serious disease and death, and I don't know when that will be available," Rubin said in an email to CNN. Rubin said the FDA might have access to that data, but he had not seen it yet.

If I could distill the anger about that essay down to a single sentence (besides simply, “Shut up!”) it would be this: “You talk about the problems in Christian conservatism too much. Talk about the Left more.” 

And I get it. I really do. In a deeply divided nation where millions of people have convinced themselves that the church is under unprecedented siege, you want Christians who possess a public platform to “defend the church.” There is a deep and profound human desire for advocacy.

Yet that’s not remotely the model of biblical discourse, especially of how believers talk to each other.