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Sweden spent the past week trying, unsuccessfully, to find a foreign submarine thought to be lurking in its waters. But on Friday, having scoured the coast, the Swedish military called off the search. So what's going on in the Baltic?

What it means is that they've been searching among the islands and skerries off Stockholm for a submarine that shouldn't be there, bringing back dormant memories of the Cold War. Back in the 1970s and 80s Sweden regularly scoured its territorial waters for Soviet subs, almost always without success.

Once a a nuclear-armed whiskey-class submarine ran aground near a Swedish naval base, causing a diplomatic incident that became known inevitably as Whiskey on the Rocks. Fast forward to today, and a time when countries around the Baltic Sea are casting nervous glances towards a newly assertive Russia

Could the Republicans who control Congress in 2015, the party of no, ever pass a Homestead Act? That law, which went into effect the very day, Jan. 1, 1863, Lincoln’s wartime executive order to free slaves in the breakaway states did, carries a clause that very few Republicans would support now.

Former slaves, “famine Irish,” Russian Jews, single women, Mexicans who didn’t speak a word of English — all qualified to claim 160 acres as their own. You didn’t have to be a citizen to get your quarter-square-mile. You just had to intend to become a citizen.

Consider the vision to stitch a railroad from east to west, an enormous tangle of infrastructure. In 1862, Lincoln signed legislation spurring construction of the transcontinental railroad. That same year, he approved a bill that led to the creation of land grant colleges.

Jane Austen. She is not only a climate of opinion, she is a movement, a mood, a lifestyle, an attitude and, perhaps most tellingly of all, a fridge magnet.

there are no other writers who have quite so many imitators. Each publishing year brings its crop of Austen novels, whether they are prequels, sequels or fresh treatments of a plot from a new perspective

Last year saw a particularly good one, Jo Baker’s “Longbourn,” which was “Pride and Prejudice” viewed from below the stairs by the servants. The veteran crime novelist P.D. James also joined in with her “Death Comes to Pemberley,” which brought murder into the otherwise ordered world of Austen’s characters. That novel was duly added to the list of Austen sequels that have ended up on the screen, including the odd Bollywood contribution.

A poll released in September found that Republicans were more likely to think that Obama was born abroad than that Ted Cruz was. That poll found that Trump supporters believed by nearly a three-to-one ratio that Obama was born overseas.

This echo chamber deluded its believers to the point that it sometimes apparently killed them. During the 2009-10 flu pandemic, right-wing broadcasters like Limbaugh and Glenn Beck denounced the call for flu shots, apparently seeing it as a nefarious Obama plot.

The upshot was that Democrats were 50 percent more likely than Republicans to say that they would get flu shots, according to a peer-reviewed article in The Journal of Health Politics, Policy and Law. So when the pandemic killed up to 18,000 Americans, they presumably were disproportionately conservatives.

North Korea fired several short-range projectiles into the sea off its east coast Thursday, Seoul officials said, just hours after the U.N. Security Council approved the toughest sanctions on Pyongyang in two decades for its recent nuclear test and long-range rocket launch.

The North's launches also come shortly after Seoul's parliament passed its first legislation on human rights in North Korea.

Defense spokesman Moon Sang Gyun said the projectiles were fired from the eastern coastal town of Wonsan, adding authorities were trying to determine what exactly North Korea fired. The projectiles could be missiles, artillery or rockets, according to the Defense Ministry.

Adelanto is a small town (population 31.000) in the deserts of inland Southern California where people are sent to prison

It's a fairly poor community, with a median household wage of $37,000, much lower than the state median of $60,000.

But when California citizens voted to loosen marijuana laws and allow for medical use, most of these communities resisted and passed ordinances to prohibit pot dispensaries in their neighborhoods.

AQI was weakened in Iraq in 2007 as a result of what is known as the Sunni Awakening, when a large alliance of Iraqi Sunni tribes, supported by the U.S., fought against the jihadist group. AQI saw an opportunity to regain its power and expand its ranks in the Syrian conflict

Although originally an al Qaeda affiliate, ISIS and al-Baghdadi had a public falling out in 2013 with Ayman al-Zawahiri, Osama bin Laden’s replacement and leader of al Qaeda “core,” over the role of another al Qaeda group, the al-Nursa Front, in Syria

ISIS saw a series of successes as it has cut its way from Syria into Iraq and towards Baghdad using a combination of military expertise and unimaginable brutality.

Islamist extremism: Why young people are being drawn to it

She was speaking after a 15-year-old boy was charged with conspiracy in connection with an alleged terror plot in Australia.

Last month, reports said one of two girls who ran away from their home in Austria to join the so-called Islamic State in Syria had been beaten to death while trying to escape. She was 17.

ISIS Followers in U.S. Are Diverse and Young

American authorities this year have arrested nearly five dozen people in the United States for helping to support or plot with the Islamic State

ndividuals arrested on charges related to the Islamic State since March 2014, including 56 this year, emerged from a comprehensive review of social media accounts and legal documents of nearly 400 American sympathizers

had been radicalized before their marriage, and the husband, Syed Rizwan Farook, might have plotted an attack as far back as 2012 with one of his longtime frie

were considering violent action before the Islamic State rose to prominence in 2014 and began trying to inspire sympathizers to carry out attacks in the West.

two killers were starting to radicalize towards martyrdom and jihad as early as 2013

Attackers struck in the middle of the day Thursday

CNN security analyst Bob Baer likened the Jakarta attack to the November 13 Paris massacre in which terrorists linked to ISIS struck several locations at the same time. Yet the number of dead was nowhere near the toll of 130 in France, with Clarke Jones,

hub -- killing at least

To answer that question it is helpful to examine three interrelated phenomena: the history of European fascism, the rise of far-right nationalist parties around the West today and what historian Richard Hofstadter famously termed "the paranoid style in American politics."

"A sense of overwhelming crisis beyond the reach of traditional solutions." Trump's ascendancy outside the structures of the traditional Republican Party and his clarion calls about America's supposedly precipitously declining role in the world capture this trait well.

"The superiority of the leader's instincts over abstract and universal reason." Trump's careless regard for the truth -- such as his claims that thousands of Muslims in New Jersey cheered the 9/11 attacks, or that Mexican immigrants are rapists and murders -- and the trust he places in his own gut capture this well.

Stripped to his undershirt and covered in filth, the world’s most notorious drug lord dragged himself out of the sewers and into the middle of traffic.

The Mexican marines had been on Mr. Guzmán’s trail for more than six months, ever since he humiliated the nation by escaping its most secure prison through a tunnel that led into the shower floor of his cell.

But it had come at a cost. The authorities had swept through 18 of his homes and properties in his native lands. Days on end in the inhospitable mountains, where even a billionaire like Mr. Guzmán was forced to rough it, left him yearning for a bit of comfort.

MEXICO CITY — Stripped to his undershirt and covered in filth, the world’s most notorious drug lord dragged himself out of the sewers and into the middle of traffic.

Disoriented from his long trudge underground, with gun-toting marines on his heels, he found himself standing across the street from a Walmart. Joaquín Guzmán Loera, the kingpin known across the globe as El Chapo, would have to improvise. His cavalry was not coming.

The Mexican marines had been on Mr. Guzmán’s trail for more than six months, ever since he humiliated the nation by escaping its most secure prison through a tunnel that led into the shower floor of his cell.

ISIS steps up attacks far from its 'caliphate'

Istanbul, Jakarta, Philadelphia, multiple locations in Libya, the Russian republic of Dagestan: within the past two weeks all have been the target of attacks by ISIS supporters or affiliates, killing and wounding dozens of people.

Islamic State in Iraq and Syria is spreading its wings as it comes under greater pressure in its Iraqi-Syrian heartland

A Democratic member of President Donald Trump’s voter fraud probe said it should urgently disclose what it’s been working on and its future plans, or else disband entirely. Alan King, a probate judge in Jefferson County, Alabama, is one of four Democrats on the 11-member Presidential Advisory Commission on Election Integrity. He told HuffPost on Tuesday that he was disappointed in how the commission had conducted business and wouldn’t be surprised if other members of the panel had already drafted a recommendation to the president. “Based on what I’ve read and accounts, it wouldn’t surprise me,” King said. “It wouldn’t surprise me if this whole commission was set up and they had an end result in mind when this commission was first originated.”

While he added that it was possible “that there are maybe some pockets of folks on both sides of the aisle who perhaps haven’t followed the rules,” he continued, “it’s a huge leap to go from that type of scenario to then go to to this massive plot, conspiracy of almost election mafia standards, to think that there are massive, widespread voting fraud in the United States.” 

As some Democrats on the commission have begun openly questioning their fellow commissioners’ activities, Democrats in Congress have asked the Government Accountability Office to review whether the panel is complying with transparency requirements. Several federal lawsuits have also sought to block the commission from operating, alleging it is not complying with federal transparency and privacy requirements. Critics of the panel characterize it as an effort to weaken confidence in American elections, saying it aims to lay the groundwork for more restrictive voting laws and substantiate Trump’s claim that millions voted illegally last year (several studies and investigations have shown voter fraud is not a widespread problem). Trump and Vice President Mike Pence, the commission’s chair, have pledged that the panel would be bipartisan and neutral.

Only Mao and Deng Xiaoping have had their names attached to their ideologies - and Deng's name was only added to the constitution after his death.

A call for "complete and deep reform" and "new developing ideas" A promise of "harmonious living between man and nature" - this is a call for improved environmental conservation, and could refer to the stated aim to have the bulk of China's energy needs supplied by renewables An emphasis on "absolute authority of the party over the people's army" - which comes amid what analysts call the largest turnover of senior military officials in modern Chinese history

An emphasis on the importance of "'one country two systems" and reunification with the motherland - a clear reference to Hong Kong and Taiwan

RULES? MORE RULES? REALLY? Isn’t life complicated enough, restricting enough, without abstract rules that don’t take our unique, individual situations into account? And given that our brains are plastic, and all develop differently based on our life experiences, why even expect that a few rules might be helpful to us all?

“I’ve got some good news…and I’ve got some bad news,” the lawgiver yells to them. “Which do you want first?” “The good news!” the hedonists reply. “I got Him from fifteen commandments down to ten!” “Hallelujah!” cries the unruly crowd. “And the bad?” “Adultery is still in.”

Maps of Meaning was sparked by Jordan’s agonized awareness, as a teenager growing up in the midst of the Cold War, that much of mankind seemed on the verge of blowing up the planet to defend their various identities. He felt he had to understand how it could be that people would sacrifice everything for an “identity,”