All of this provides plenty of reason to worry, but we now come to perhaps the most troubling development of all. President Schlissel said he is guided by U-M’s values as a public institution. But when the decision was made to reopen, U-M’s Board of Regents was chaired by Ann Arbor’s largest landlord, Ron Weiser — a billionaire Trump megadonor who has given more than $100M to U-M in the last six years. He closed a new $30M gift within days of U-M’s decision to reopen. In one of the biggest conflicts of interest imaginable between public health and private wealth, former board chair Weiser stood to lose tens of millions of dollars if students didn’t come back and pay rent.

Demonstrators, many with far-right sympathies, broke through a cordon and ran up the steps of the Reichstag before police dispersed them. The interior minister said there should be "zero tolerance" for such behaviour. Some 38,000 turned out for the wider, largely peaceful Berlin demonstration. Demonstrators bearing the flag of former imperial Germany - used by the Reichsbürger (Reich Citizens) far-right group - overcame a handful of police to run to the building entrance.

The coronavirus pandemic has businesses and homeowners alike seeking out anything that might make shared spaces feel safer and more sanitary. That has some consumers and product manufacturers turning to ultraviolet, or UV light as a potential solution -- specifically, a type of UV light called UVC, which has extra-short wavelengths and enough energy to alter the DNA and RNA of organic cells, which stops them from reproducing. UVC light has a long history as a proven disinfectant at places like hospitals and laboratories, and businesses including airlines, hotels and retail spaces have been relying on the invisible light more than ever in 2020. The pandemic has also produced a flood of cheap, unregulated, consumer-facing devices for use in the home, including handheld UVC wands that look like lightsabers.  Devices like those are nothing new, but the pandemic-borne surge of interest in them is raising alarms, because UVC light is a known carcinogen, and even a few moments of direct exposure can be hazardous to the eyes and skin.

Massachusetts Gov. Charlie Baker signed an order activating up to 1,000 National Guard members in the state on Friday.

PORTLAND, Ore. (AP) — One person was shot and killed late Saturday in Portland, Oregon, as a large caravan of President Donald Trump supporters and Black Lives Matter protesters clashed in the...

Arizona State University's College Republicans United is asking for donations to support Kyle Rittenhouse, who was arrested on Wednesday and faces six criminal charges including homicide.

In her new book, writer Vicky Osterweil argues that looting is a powerful tool to bring about real, lasting change in society.

The House of Representatives is set to vote on marijuana legalization on the federal level next month, Majority Whip James Clyburn announced Friday. While individual states would have to vote on guidelines and legality, 11 states have already legalized marijuana within their borders. If voted into effect, the Marijuana Opportunity Reinvestment and Expungement (MORE) Act would take marijuana off the list of illegal substances in the Controlled Substances Act. This is the first time Congress will vote on removing marijuana from the controlled substances act.

Kurt Andersen looks at the not-so-secret conspiracy by the rich, right and big business.

Blocks of soil and ice thrown hundreds of metres from epicentre of the funnel at the Yamal peninsula.

Ubisoft finds itself embroiled in controversy again today, as the intro video for its mobile game Tom Clancy: Elite Squad appears to cast the player in opposition to global protests that use Black Lives Matter iconography, making for another public misstep for a company that has long had trouble separating militaristic messages from games that it claims to be free of politics. The video suggests a fictional world gripped by widespread unrest and protests, a particularly resonant image in the wake of the very real protests that have spread across the country and the world in the wake of the police killing of George Floyd in late May, now re-inflamed by the police shooting of Jacob Blake in Kenosha Wisconsin and the vigilante shootings that followed. In the game, the protests are being controlled by a shadowy organization known as “Umbra” in an elaborate conspiracy. “Imagery that appeared in the opening video sequence of Tom Clancy’s Elite Squad featured a ‘raised fist’ was insensitive and harmful in both its inclusion and how it was portrayed. We have listened to and appreciate the players and the broader community who have pointed it out and we apologize. It will be removed in our next title update this Tuesday, September 1 on Android and as soon as we’re able to on iOS.” The inclusion of the first iconography was certainly a troubling detail in the trailer, but it was far from the the only problematic piece of this puzzle. The premise of the game, at least as depicted here, is that protests and unrest around the world are being controlled and manipulated by a shadowy organization bent on world domination. This is a classic right-wing trope leveled in an effort to de-legitimatizing grassroots protests, frequently tinged with antisemitism and references to George Soros. Releasing a game that leans on this trope would be irresponsible at any moment, but feels especially dangerous right now. Several contract writers on the project tweeted that they were told that Umbra was more like a James Bond, Spectre-style organization, and had no idea it would be framed this way. This problem is not new to Ubisoft or its Tom Clancy games. The Division cast the player as a member of an elite, shadowy organization tasked with bringing the country under control in the event of catastrophe—in this case a lethal pandemic. They player, however, spent huge portions of the game shooting “looters”. The company, in the meantime, insists that its games avoid political messaging even as those games dance awkwardly around real-life issues. As Elite Squad shows, the company has a long way to go when it comes to handling these issues with care.

Physical distancing should be seen as only one part of a wider public health approach.

An Arkansas sheriff resigned Friday after coming under fire over a leaked racist recording. Sheriff Todd Wright of Arkansas County, about 85 miles southeast of Little Rock, resigned effective immediately on Friday during a public meeting on the incident at the county's Quorum Court, which is its governing legislative body. The meeting, which was recorded live and posted on Facebook, was held after a local news outlet, the Pine Bluff Commercial, identified Wright as the man heard in a five-minute audio recording delivering a racist rant.

Mail delivery has been cut off at the Mar Vista Gardens public housing complex, and residents must now collect their mail more than a mile away.

The video, widely shared on China’s Twitter-like Weibo, shows the parked EV emit smoke and burst into flames seconds later.

Aformer Liberty University student says Becki Falwell, the wife of the university’s then-President Jerry Falwell Jr., jumped into bed with him and performed oral sex on him while he stayed over at the Falwell home after a band practice with her eldest son in 2008. The student was 22 at the time of the encounter, near the start of Liberty’s fall semester. He said she initiated the act, and he went along with it. But despite his rejection of further advances, he said, Falwell continued pursuing him, offering him gifts and engaging in banter through Facebook messages.

T. Denny Sanford, the richest man in South Dakota and a major donor to children’s charities, was being investigated for possible possession of child pornography, according to four people familiar with the probe. Investigators with the South Dakota attorney general’s Division of Criminal Investigation obtained a search warrant as part of the probe, according to two of the people, who spoke on the condition of anonymity. They said the case was referred to the U.S. Department of Justice for further investigation. Sanford has not been charged with any crime. It’s not clear what evidence, if any, investigators used to obtain the search warrant or what they collected from the search. It’s also not clear how the investigation may have progressed since federal authorities received the referral or if it is still ongoing.

A handy resource for wonks with autism.

Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell’s (R-Ky.) reelection campaign confirmed that it has hired Nicholas Sandmann, the Kentucky teenager who garnered national attention for his viral encounter with a Native American elder in a crowd last year at

Some states have recently increased the severity of criminal penalties for protesters along political lines.