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Billy Martin does not care much for politicians. But the retired teacher and coach liked what he heard from Marjorie Taylor Greene, who promised to arrive in Washington as a defiant force, intent on rattling the establishment.

But in recent weeks, it has also been impossible to ignore the torrent of troubling social media posts and videos in which Ms. Greene had endorsed violent behavior, including executing Democratic leaders, and spread an array of conspiracy theories, including that the Sept. 11 terrorist attack on the Pentagon and the massacre at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Fla., were hoaxes.

“Sometimes people say things they regret, speak before they think,” Mr. Martin said as he got in his pickup in downtown Summerville, a town of 4,300 people represented by Ms. Greene,

Coronavirus mask guidance is endangering US health workers, experts say

With crucial protective gear in short supply, federal authorities are saying health workers can wear lower-grade surgical masks while treating Covid-19 patients – but growing evidence suggests the practice is putting workers in jeopardy.

But scholars, not-for-profit leaders and former regulators in the specialized field of occupational safety say relying on surgical masks – which are considerably less protective than N95 respirators – is almost certainly fueling illness among frontline health workers, who probably make up about 11% of all known Covid-19 cases.

Suzanne Muscara, 38, sent a threatening letter to the senator’s home in 2018 after becoming upset with her vote to confirm Brett Kavanaugh as a Supreme Court justice, the authorities said.

The woman, Suzanne Muscara, 38, of Burlington, Maine, who was convicted during a daylong trial in November of mailing a threatening communication, will also have to complete three years of supervised release after finishing her prison term, Judge Lance E. Walker of U.S. District Court in Maine ruled.

Ms. Collins depicting her as a stick figure with X’s for eyes. The word “AnthRAX!!!” and “HA HA HA!!!” were also written on the letter. (The Postal Service had been monitoring mail to the senator because of a piece of threatening mail that had been received at her home on Oct. 15.)

The spectacular irony was that a man who thrived on grabbing attention on TV and social media had left a trail of digital clues that ought to lead all the way to conviction. It was the 21st-century equivalent of a Victorian diary in which the master criminal brags about how he did it.

A half-century ago in his famous "Two Cultures" speech, C.P. Snow defined the growing rift between the world of scientists (including, increasingly, the commercial world) and that of literary intellectuals (including, increasingly, the humanities).

Today, the "two cultures" not only rarely speak to one another, but also increasingly, as their languages and world views diverge, are unable to do so.

Science merely nods and says, "I see your Jane Austen monographs and deconstructions of 'The Tempest' and raise you stem-cell research and the iPhone"

As access to devices has spread, children in poorer families are spending considerably more time than children from more well-off families using their television and gadgets to watch shows and videos, play games and connect on social networking sites, studies show. This growing time-wasting gap, policy makers and researchers say, is more a reflection of the ability of parents to monitor and limit how children use technology than of access to it.

“access is not a panacea,” said Danah Boyd, a senior researcher at Microsoft. “Not only does it not solve problems, it mirrors and magnifies existing problems we’ve been ignoring.”

d the initial push to close the digital divide did not anticipate how computers would be used for entertainment.

The district’s graduation rate was 91 percent in 2011, up from 80 percent in 2008. On state tests in reading, math and science, an average of 88 percent of students across grades and subjects met proficiency standards, compared with 73 percent three years ago. Attendance is up, dropouts are down. Mooresville ranks 100th out of 115 districts in North Carolina in terms of dollars spent per student — $7,415.89 a year — but it is now third in test scores and second in graduation rates.

“Other districts are doing things, but what we see in Mooresville is the whole package: using the budget, innovating, using data, involvement with the community and leadership,”

Mooresville’s laptops perform the same tasks as those in hundreds of other districts: they correct worksheets, assemble progress data for teachers, allow for compelling multimedia lessons, and let students work at their own pace or in groups, rather than all listening to one teacher. The difference, teachers and administrators here said, is that they value computers not for the newest content they can deliver, but for how they tap into the oldest of student emotions — curiosity, boredom, embarrassment, angst — and help educators deliver what only people can. Technology, here, is cold used to warm.

The statue of Vladimir Lenin in Sloviansk has seen its last sunrise. In a belated act to overcome its Soviet past and warn the Kremlin not to retake the Donetsk Oblast city, which Ukrainian forces liberated a year ago, the city administration carefully dismantled the statute on the central square on June 3. The monument is now up for sale to the highest bidder. The money will go to rebuilding homes damaged by Russia's war against Ukraine, Deputy Mayor Andrey Belozerov said.

Russian military troops had taken control over Crime peninsula by blocking Ukrainian army and naval bases in March 2014. Now Russian efforts are underway to turn occupied Crimea into a 'giant military base'.

That's according to independent Crimean reporter Andriy Klymenko, who says the Kremlin soon plans to station 100,000 soldiers on the Black Sea peninsula, reports Unian

Surveys of Latinos conducted by the Gallup Organization, NBC News and CNN all show that the party’s brand has been hurt by the language of the 2016 contest. Data from ImpreMedia and Latino Decisions that spans the three years after Mitt Romney’s loss detail the magnitude and depth of the reaction to the 2016 campaign.

In 2012, only 18 percent of Latino voters thought Mr. Romney was “hostile” toward Hispanic voters. By November 2015, the number who thought that had jumped to 45 percent. The largest shift was among those 18 to 35. More than three times as many young Latino respondents think the party is hostile toward them compared with 2012 results (a move to 65 percent from 18 percent in 2012).

After Mr. Romney’s 2012 defeat, the party convened a task force to examine its recent presidential losses. The result was a report on the party’s growth and opportunities among the electorate. In the Growth and Opportunity Project, the task force wrote: “It is imperative that the RNC changes how it engages with Hispanic communities to welcome in new members of our party. If Hispanic Americans hear that the G.O.P. doesn’t want them in the United States, they won’t pay attention to our next sentence.”

In Guatemala, military stands trial for sexual slavery

Sitting at the defense table, Asig sat with his head tilted toward the floor in apparent boredom. Reyes Giron flipped through case documents with one hand, his other arm clasped tight over his gut. A former lieutenant in the Guatemalan army, Reyes Giron is accused of leading what the prosecution has described as a strategic effort to crush peasant resistance.

During that war, which lasted from 1960 to 1996, battles between the state and Marxist guerrillas often served as impetus and cover for massacres that left an estimated 200,000 people dead and another 45,000 missing — the vast majority of them civilians.

Winter Poses New Danger for Migrants

If the numbers increase drastically or, worse, if there are more border closings, there would be an almost immediate backup that would quickly repopulate border camps within a week — some of them open-air, others consisting mostly of unheated tents.

Hungary completed a 108-mile razor-wire fence along its border with Serbia last month, following a free-for-all this summer that saw squalid encampments

now, social media is pushing that spectacle to become continuous, intimate and hyperactive on multiple fronts. Performers gather shards of attention into a multimedia mosaic that’s presented like a soap opera coupled with a surveillance log: evidence of authenticity that can turn forensic.

As the perceived value of recorded music has dropped nearly to zero, people have been willing to pay more and more each year for live concerts — where the music is the main thing in the room, where distractions are minimized

for the top 100 tours of 2018 alone, gross revenues worldwide were $5.6 billion and average ticket prices rose from $84.63 in 2017 to $93.65 this year

There is, or should be, a democratic element to capitalism — and an economic element to how we define democracy.

After all, oligarchy does have an economic element to it; in fact, it is explicitly economic. Oligarchy is the rule of the few, and these few have been understood since Aristotle’s time to be men of wealth, property, nobility, what have you.

But somehow, as the definition of democracy has been handed down to us over the years, the word has come to mean the existence and exercise of a few basic rights and principles. The people — the “demos” — are imbued with no particular economic characteristic. This is wrong. Our definition of democracy needs to change