Section: The Atlantic (USA)
What We’re Following This Evening
A Dutch referendum: The polls have closed in the Netherlands for a vote on a free trade deal between the European Union and Ukraine. The majority of voters, about 64 percent, rejected the agreement, but an exit poll showed that the turnout may have fallen short of the total required for the vote to be valid. The poll put turnout at 32 percent,...
Building a Language to Communicate With Extraterrestrials
The Allan Telescope Array, a radio telescope for combined radio astronomy and the search for extraterrestrial intelligence (SETI) Colby Gutierrez-Kraybill / WikimediaLast July, the Russian billionaire Yuri Milner launched a campaign called the Breakthrough Initiatives, a $100-million dollar donation to be doled out to scientists working on the...
Watching the ‘Panama Papers’ News in Russia
Maxim Shemetov / ReutersMOSCOW—After a community of investigative journalists uncovered documents appearing to show that scores of world leaders and public officials could be engaged in money laundering, tax avoidance, and various forms of financial wrongdoing, the disclosures were splashed liberally on front pages around the world. But in...
The Edge: One Person, One Vote, One Rejection
J. Scott Applewhite / APToday in One Paragraph The U.S. Supreme Court unanimously upheld the “one person, one vote” standard for apportioning legislative districts in Evenwel v. Abbott. People in Iceland are calling for the resignation of their prime minister in the fallout from Sunday’s release of the ‘Panama Papers.’ A federal judge...
Still Cleaning Up: 30 Years After the Chernobyl Disaster
Sean Gallup / GettyThis month marks the 30th anniversary of the Chernobyl nuclear disaster. On April 26, 1986, technicians conducting a test inadvertently caused reactor number four to explode. Several hundred staff and firefighters then tackled a blaze that burned for 10 days and sent a plume of radiation around the world in the worst-ever civil...
The Political Fallout From the Panama Papers
Iceland’s Prime Minister Sigmundur Gunnlaugsson Brynjar Gunnarsson / APUpdated on April 4 at 2:09 p.m. ET Disclosures from the Panama Papers are rocking the global political elite, with calls for the resignation of Iceland’s prime minister and protestations of innocence from the children of Pakistan’s leaders. The documents were...
The Names in the Panama Papers
Arnulfo Franco / APDocuments leaked Sunday from a Panama-based firm, which sells offshore shell companies, purport to show corruption and questionable business practices of the world’s politicians, billionaires, entertainers, athletes, drug barons, and others. At the heart of the nearly four decades of records from Mossack Fonseca, the...
The Edge: U.S. Women’s Soccer Goes for (Equal) Gold
Elaine Thompson / APToday in One Paragraph President Obama vowed to work with South Korea and Japan in ramping up pressure against North Korea in remarks at the Nuclear Security Summit. The United States dispatched FBI teams to assist Belgian authorities investigate the March 22 attacks. A Belgian court approved the extradition of Paris attacks...
The End of the Beginning in Syria
A boy plays on rubble in the rebel-held besieged town of Douma, Syria. Bassam Khabieh / ReutersFive years ago this week, Syrian President Bashar al-Assad gave a television address about the largely peaceful protests against his rule. “Let us act as quickly as possible to heal our wounds and restore harmony to our larger family and maintain love...
In Praise of Political Reporters
Yuri Gripas / Reuters Last night, President Obama gave the keynote lecture at an annual dinner to honor excellence in political reporting. The dinner is held once a year to commemorate Robin Toner, a legendary reporter who covered domestic politics for The New York Times until her death in 2008. (Obama recounted one of the anecdotes that has...
