That American football has a devoted fanbase in Europe is no big secret. The demand is so high that the National Football League (NFL) is planning to start a franchise in London. The league already hosts some games overseas, with a November match up between the Dallas Cowboys and the Jacksonville Jaguars sold out at Wembley Stadium.
The era when it was required of any well-rounded child to practice piano scales every day on the big family instrument in the living room is long gone. Sales of acoustic pianos—the old-fashioned ones with no electricity required—are plummeting, and stores dedicated to selling new instruments are closing around the United States, reports the Associated Press.
New Year’s Day is a holiday that should be all about joyous celebration and hope, but too often ends up with moping and resentment.
The man who calls himself the “father of Viagra,” the drug used to treat erectile disfunction, joined the ranks of Brits knighted by Queen Elizabeth II. Dr Simon Campbell received the knighthood “for services to Chemistry” in the annual New Year’s Honours, according to the official list of awards, placing him in the same elite company as Sir Elton John and Sir Richard Branson.
Before there was Google, there were librarians.
There’s no question the American criminal justice system is in terrible shape, and the problems plaguing it are exacerbated as time goes by. In 2014, the US still imprisons more people than any other country, incarcerating black men at disproportionately high rates. Police killings in Ferguson and New York and incidents of police brutality dominated the news this year, and demonstrated that law enforcement is in need of overarching reform.
Judging by media coverage, 2014, has been a bad year for the aviation industry. But as the world anxiously awaits updates from the year’s fourth major air tragedy, an examination of the data shows air travel has never been safer.
“This is my worst nightmare,” tweeted AirAsia Group CEO Tony Fernandes, as he led his young airline’s response to the disappearance of AirAsia flight QZ8501 Sunday morning.
Jeb Bush, scion of an American political dynasty, announced on social media that he was considering running for the office previously held by his brother and father. Exposing himself to widespread internet mockery, he wrote in a highly cautious Facebook post that he decided to ”actively explore the possibility of running for President of the United States.”
Negotiators entered this month’s United Nations climate conference with optimism after the US and China hashed out a side deal on their climate commitments before the talks. But to many, the deal reached on Dec. 14 in Lima, Peru failed to live up to the hype.
A recent article in Rolling Stone magazine detailed a brutal gang rape at the University of Virginia. It was a classic tale of sexual assault at American campuses: hard-partying, binge-drinking fraternity members, a stigmatized female victim, and an indifferent university administration.
After president Vladimir Putin called the internet a “CIA project,” this was probably just a matter of time: Google confirmed late Thursday (Dec. 11) that it’s getting its engineers out of Russia. According to tech site The Information, which first reported the news (paywall), its 50 mostly Moscow-based engineers will have the option to leave the company or relocate to other countries. Google will, however, keep marketing and sales teams in Russia, and it’s not shutting down its services; on the contrary, company sources have told both Western and Russian media that it plans to up its investment in Russia next year.
Never let it be said that the European Commission doesn’t address the serious issues: It has just fined a cartel of five envelope makers $24 million. If you live in Europe, and have been outraged by the steep price of the envelopes for your carefully arranged Christmas-card photo, this could be a big deal for you.
As if bringing another human being into this world wasn’t stressful enough, pregnant women are told to avoid many of life’s small pleasures: from eating sushi and hot dogs to petting cats and dying their hair.
The American government was bracing for serious blowback from the US Senate investigation of the CIA’s secret interrogations of terrorism suspects. But behind the flurry about America’s post-9/11 misdeeds is news that another country was complicit in the CIA’s program: Poland.
This article has been corrected.
Foley Square is a small park in lower Manhattan, close to City Hall and surrounded by court buildings. Once a site of the Occupy Wall Street protests, on Thursday night it served as a forum for thousands speaking out against police killings of unarmed black men.
Today, following an investigation of 600 incidents of use of force by police officers between 2010 and 2013 in Cleveland, where an officer shot a 12-year-old boy because he was wielding a toy gun, US attorney general Eric Holder said there was cause to believe Cleveland police have engaged in a pattern of using excessive force.
Scott Panetti, a 56-year-old convicted murderer, was scheduled to be executed tonight in Texas, by lethal injection. But this morning, the 5th Circuit Court of Appeals stayed the execution “pending further order of the court to allow us to fully consider the late arriving and complex legal questions at issue in this matter.”
Next time you brag about biking to work instead of driving for the sake of the environment, take a good look inside your lunch box.
US president Barack Obama announced Monday the White House would be shelling out $75 million for 50,000 body cameras to be worn by police officers around the country. The initiative comes amid widespread calls to check police powers in the wake of events in Ferguson, Missouri, where a grand jury decided not to indict a police officer who shot an unarmed teenager in August. Since then, police body cams have been trotted out as a foolproof solution.
Every couple of months Facebook users engage in a collective frenzy to protect their daily updated online lives by posting status updates stipulating they own the copyright to content they post on the social network.
A country with a reputation for being staunchly conservative defied that stereotype this weekend, when residents of Słupsk, a city in northern Poland, elected Robert Biedroń, a well-known gay rights activist, as its mayor.
In its first review of the U.S. justice system since 2006, a United Nations committee has cited a long list of transgressions against international standards of human rights, from the use of water-boarding on terrorist suspects to shackling pregnant inmates in prisons, and the racially-charged police brutality on American streets.
