Regardless whether you drink sweetened ice tea, sports drinks, or soda, one thing is clear: sugary drinks are a health hazard. New research shows that beverages sweetened with sugar may have contributed to up to 184,000 deaths globally, mostly by causing increased rates of type 2 diabetes, heart disease, and cancer.
The unlikely ballet star Misty Copeland made history today, becoming the first black female principal dancer at the prestigious American Ballet Theatre. She was promoted after 14 years with the company, with more than half her time there spent as a soloist.
The heated debate over the Confederate flag escalated last night into an actual brawl, when about 10 flag supporters arrived at the South Carolina statehouse in Columbia and clashed with the about 30 protesters who were rallying there against the flag.
A drug cocktail that has been used during several botched executions does not violate the US constitution’s ban on cruel and unusual punishment, the US Supreme Court said today in a 5-4 ruling.
This post has been corrected.
The militant group that calls itself the Islamic State recruits foreign fighters—more than 20,000 to date, according to some estimates—from all over the world, France to Indonesia. And some of those, of course, are from the United States.
US president Barack Obama had a busy, emotional day. After delivering a moving statement on the Supreme Court’s decision to effectively legalize gay marriage, Obama travelled to Charleston, South Carolina to give a eulogy for Clementa Pinckney, one of the victims of last week’s shooting at a historic black church .
This is a developing story. We will continue to update this post.
Taxi drivers around the world are unhappy about the rise of Uber, but French taxi drivers have lashed out against the car hailing app with particular anger and violence. A massive taxi strike today has turned Paris and other French cities into chaos, with drivers flipping over cars, burning tires, and blocking access to airports. At one point police in riot gear used tear gas to suppress the violence.
Alabama governor Robert Bentley unilaterally ordered the removal of the Confederate battle flag from the grounds of the state capitol this morning, saying the decision was “partially” related to the shooting in Charleston, South Carolina last week. Dylann Roof, a 21-year-old white supremacist, shot and killed 9 people in a historic black church, and appeared in online images beside the flag, which is seen by many as a symbol of slavery and racism.
In an unexpected consequence of Western sanctions against Russia, the Chechen strongman and Putin ally Ramzan Kadyrov has become an outspoken champion for “horse rights.” The Czech Republic, where Kadyrov keeps his stable of racehorses, ruled on Monday that it would freeze any prize money won by the animals.
Online retailers are joining brick-and-mortar giants like Wal-Mart and Kmart to ban sales of products that bear the Confederate flag, amid a public debate about the flag’s controversial symbolism after last week’s deadly attack on a South Carolina church.
Islamic State militants have controlled Mosul, a major city in northern Iraq, for more than a year. But now, during the Muslim holy month of Ramadan, the group is cracking down even more tightly, banning traditional games such as backgammon and dominoes, according to Radio Free Europe and local media.
An Australian family cattle business is selling the largest private stretch of real estate on Earth: grazing land that is more than 75% the size of England. The 23,000 square km (8,880 square mile) property is so big that prospective buyers will spend an entire week of flying around in a plane to view it.
The pope is not known to be one to mince his words when it comes to global weapons manufacturers. On Sunday, he set aside the remarks he had planned to deliver during a rally in Turin, and instead unleashed a tirade on politics and war, focusing on the arms industry, in his harshest criticism to date.
Three months ago, Starbucks CEO Howard Schultz was widely ridiculed for his idea to get people talking, over Starbucks coffee, about race relations in America. Though he quickly backtracked on a piece of the plan that would have had employees directly engaging customers in discussions about race, he isn’t abandoning the issue.
Poland is very Catholic—so densely Catholic, in fact, that a Google map showing Catholic parishes in the country has barely any empty space.
After alleged shooter Dylann Storm Roof killed nine people at a historically black church in Charleston, South Carolina on Tuesday night, mourners gathered in the city and around the country to honor the victims.
This is a developing story and will be updated as more details emerge.
What to watch for today
The FBI is investigating the St. Louis Cardinals for allegedly hacking into the computer networks of the Houston Astros, the New York Times reports (paywall)—a unusual case of corporate-style computer espionage in the world of professional sports, which may end up being traced to a re-used password.
The racial background of Rachel Dolezal has sparked a national furor after her parents revealed that the longtime civil rights activist is white, not African American, as she had maintained for years. Despite the controversy, she remained defiant about her identity on the Today Show this morning when interviewed by Matt Lauer.
There is no soccer game today in the main stadium of Pristina, the capital of the small nation of Kosovo. In this traditionally male-oriented space, artist Alketa Xhafa-Mripa is drawing attention to women, and symbolically airing the country’s dirty laundry to help raise awareness about rape during the war in Kosovo in the late 1990s.
The simple act of airing dirty laundry is taking on a new, powerful meaning in the young country of Kosovo this Friday, June 12. To commemorate survivors of rape in Kosovo’s war in the late nineties, an artist is stringing up 5,000 dresses on clotheslines stretched across the main soccer stadium in the country’s capital.
