Trump signed an executive order last week reinstating a Bush-era deportation policy, Secure Communities, which effectively outlaws sanctuary cities, threatening to defund any jurisdictions that do not cooperate with Immigration and Customs Enforcement, or ICE.
“Who has time to listen to a Mahler symphony, for God’s sake?” said Leonard Bernstein in a 1989 interview with Rolling Stone. He bemoaned the fact that so few people were willing to sit through a 90-minute symphony anymore—to let an artist take the time to work up to a crescendo and return listeners back to earth. In the years since, our musical attention span has only gotten shorter. Thanks to the rise of online music streaming and MP3s, it’s easier than ever to cherry-pick individual songs without giving a second thought to their original context.
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Prince William, the Duke of Cambridge, is a familiar face on UK newsstands, particularly as media outlets have raced in recent years to cover his growing family and the causes they’ve decided to champion. Now, the 33-year-old prince is using that public interest to show his support for the LGBTQ community, by appearing in the July issue of British gay lifestyle magazine Attitude.
The Chicago-based improvisational comedy group Second City counts some of America’s greatest—and most irreverent and profane—comedians among its alumni. John Belushi, Bill Murray, Julia Louis-Dreyfus, Stephen Colbert, Tina Fey, and Keegan-Michael Key are just a few of the dozens of comedy stars the group has churned out since 1959.
In one of the first high-profile moves of his administration, London mayor Sadiq Khan announced on Monday (June 13) that body-shaming ads will no longer be allowed to appear on the city’s buses and underground trains.
The 127-year-old Hardwick Gazette, located in Hardwick, Vermont, is up for grabs. All you have to do is describe why you want to run a print newspaper in the 21st century in 400 words or less and the weekly paper can be yours.
A Chinese mall’s publicity stunt went awry earlier this week when a young child wrecked an elaborate Lego sculpture of a Disney character commissioned by China’s Dalian Wanda Group. Over $15,000 worth of Legos and three days of work went into building the five foot replica of Nick Wilde, a character from Disney’s recently-released film Zootopia. The character was briefly displayed at a shopping mall owned by Dalian Wanda in Ningbo, China, according to a report by Shanghaiist.
Close-up imagery of Pluto’s surface has scientists wondering how the dwarf planet’s terrain came to be. The photos, which show expansive mountain ranges and valleys, were taken by the New Horizons probe in July 2015 and were released by NASA this week.
An Indian NGO is installing touchscreen kiosks across the country which vulnerable children can use to ask for help.
US Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) is building a new immigration detention center in a small town in Texas with a special unit meant to house up to 36 transgender detainees. The Prairieland Detention Center, located 40 miles southeast of Dallas in Alvarado, Texas, is expected to open in November 2016, according to a spokesperson for ICE.
Leonardo DiCaprio expanded his carbon footprint last week, taking a one-day trans-Atlantic roundtrip in a private jet. The actor, who entreated viewers to “work together” to fight climate change while accepting his first Oscar in March, flew 8,000 miles from Cannes to New York City to pick up an award from a clean-water advocacy group at the Riverkeeper Fishermen’s Ball, according to Page Six.
The gloves came off in Oklahoma this week, as conservative lawmakers put forward three separate but equally aggressive pieces of legislation.
Air pollution, noise, and pedestrian accidents plague Barcelona. Like many modern urban areas, the Spanish city has consistently failed to meet air quality standards set by the World Health Organization, and studies attribute more than 3,500 deaths per year in Barcelona to the city’s polluted air. High noise levels from traffic and tourists, as well as scores of pedestrian injuries and deaths, have pushed city officials to create a bold plan they hope will set an example for the rest of the world.
A vertical shot of a fiery Portugal sunset is the best photo Florian Meissner took this week—at least that’s what his phone says. The image pops up at the top of Meissner’s screen when he opens The Roll, an app that organizes iPhone photos and makes them searchable by category or 20,000 auto-tagged keywords.
If you are one of the 3.9 billion people around the world living in a city, the air in your lungs is very likely hurting you, according to the World Health Organization’s (WHO) latest report. More than 80% of those who live in cities with more than 100,000 that monitor air pollution are exposed to air quality levels that exceed WHO limits, according to the latest Global Urban Ambient Air Pollution report.
If you’re looking for a way to help combat gender discrimination in Hollywood, try watching movies directed by women.
Hyperloop Transportation Technologies (HTT) announced that it will use a passive magnetic levitation system to make a “train” that can travel at over 700mph and is safer than conventional high speed trains, which currently reach speeds of just under 300mph.
It is tradition for West Point seniors to take a photo in their formal uniforms on the verge of graduation, reenacting a bit of history before leaving the historic military academy. That’s exactly what this group of cadets did when they posed in front of the school’s oldest barracks last month, their fists held high.
The Compassion Collective—founded by Elizabeth Gilbert, Cheryl Strayed, and three other award-winning female authors—has launched a new campaign to honor the historical roots of Mother’s Day. The group, which made headlines in December 2015 by collecting over a million dollars for Syrian refugees in 31 hours, is now collecting donations for unaccompanied refugee children and homeless American youth in honor of Julia Ward Howe’s original vision for the holiday.
Violence was in the air in Kosovo in 2003, when Minna Jarvenpaa started practicing yoga.
The august chambers of the British Parliament looked more like a high school classroom during a debate yesterday (May 4), thanks to some juvenile behavior by high-ranking MPs.
The clear, dense jelly used in New York City chef Darren Wong’s “raindrop cake” may be new to Brooklyn foodies—who are lining up by the hundreds to buy it at his weekend stall—but it’s very familiar to people from Japan. Gelatinous desserts and savory foods made with agar, a substance derived from algae, have long been popular in Japan, where the unflavored jelly is used as a vehicle for other flavors—edamame milk kanten, anyone?
