A new Scholastic policy, meant to protect schools from censorship laws, was criticized as caving to book-banners’ demands.

Spotify, already notorious for its insultingly low royalty rate, is reportedly planning to pay even less to artists who don’t already get a ton of streams. Billboard reports that the giant Swedish streaming service is restructuring its royalty system and that it “will de-monetize tracks that had previously received 0.5% of Spotify’s royalty pool.” Presumably, Spotify will frame this as a way to combat fraud and to limit payments to ambient-noise generators, but it could also have a tremendous effect on the service’s role within the independent music world.

Mike Johnson’s win marked a stunning turnaround after more than three weeks of chaotic limbo in the House.

Bettersten Wade’s search for her adult son ended when she discovered that an officer had run him over — and without telling her, authorities buried him in a pauper’s field.

The Pacific waters south of Mexico – warmed by a strong El Niño event atop long-term climate change – are spawning yet another landfalling hurricane. As of 11 a.m. EDT Tuesday, Tropical Storm Otis was located about 155 miles south-southeast of Acapulco, continuing on a steady north-northwest pace at 8 mph. Otis’s top sustained winds were up to 70 mph, and the National Hurricane Center predicts that Otis will reach hurricane strength on Tuesday before making landfall on Wednesday. A Hurricane Warning was in effect for most of the coast of Guerrero state, including Acapulco. UPDATE: As confirmed by reconnaissance and satellite data, Otis intensified at a blistering pace on Tuesday, far more quickly than expected, and it poses an increasingly serious threat to the Acapulco area. As of 11 p.m. EDT Tuesday, Otis had top sustained winds of 160 mph, putting it in the category 5 range, with a central pressure estimated at 927 millibars. Otis is predicted by the National Hurricane Center to make landfall early Wednesday morning at category 5 strength near Acapulco. Such a landfall scenario could put all or parts of the Acapulco area in the dangerous right-hand side of Otis’s core. Otis is a fairly compact hurricane, so the most destructive winds will be confined to an area near and just east of its landfall location. The strongest hurricane known to strike Mexico’s Pacific Coast was Patricia, which made landfall as a top-end category 4 storm near Cuixmala, Jalisco, on October 23, 2015, with top sustained winds of 150 mph.

According to the new Mitt Romney biography, Sinema thinks she single-handedly saved the Senate and can now retreat to a cushy post-Congress life.

Stefan Thomas lost the password to an encrypted USB drive holding 7,002 bitcoins. One team of hackers believes they can unlock it—if they can get Thomas to let them.

We turned to Rashid Khalidi, a scholar of modern Middle Eastern History and an editor of the Journal of Palestine Studies for over twenty years, for some perspective. Khalidi is the Edward Said Professor of Modern Arab Studies at Columbia University and the author of eight books, including, most recently, The Hundred Years’ War on Palestine (2020). He also served as an advisor to Palestinian negotiators during peace talks in the 1990s. We spoke with Khalidi about the response — in the U.S., in the Middle East, and elsewhere — to the events of recent weeks, the history of the Zionist project, past peace processes, and the distinctions he wishes young activists were making now.

Congressman George Santos can’t stop, won’t stop lying. Earlier this month, the representative from New York added 10 criminal counts to the 13 he was originally charged with in May, with federal prosecutors alleging he stole donor identities, used their credit cards to make more than $44,000 in charges, and wired some of the money to his own personal bank account and campaign coffers. Santos is facing the very real prospect of prison time—if convicted, a minimum of two years for aggravated identity theft and a maximum of 20 years for the other counts—and the equally real prospect of losing his seat in the House. That is, if he’s not booted by his own colleagues first. This is obviously a lot to handle, but is Santos allowing the stress of it all to stop him from doing what he loves, i.e., telling completely absurd lies for sport? No, he is not! Santos, speaking to The New York Times, claimed he had a “story that nobody talks about,” that his niece was kidnapped, likely in retaliation for his public comments about the Chinese Communist Party. “You think it was China?” reporter Grace Ashford, trying to nail him down, asked. “Look, I don’t want to go into like, conspiracy theory,” he said. “But you know, if the shoe fits, right?” According to Ashford, she subsequently got in touch with a high-ranking member of law enforcement, who told her that the matter had been looked into—and that there was no evidence of any kidnapping, period, or, really, any connection to the Chinese Communist Party. “We found nothing at all to suggest it’s true,” the official told Ashford. “I’d lean into, ‘he made it up.’” “He made it up,” is, of course, a phrase that could be applied to a significant amount of Santos’s claims, from the ones about working at Citigroup and Goldman Sachs to having grandparents who fled the Holocaust and a mother who was in the South Tower on 9/11.

A Muslim teen girl was attacked while riding the New York City subway to school in what police believe may have been another hate crime attack based on the victim’s faith.

Despite paeans to the importance of seeing “both sides,” Western media has been happy to throw its support behind Israel.

Just when the congressman thought he had neutralized Trump, the former president lowered the boom.

The tool, called Nightshade, messes up training data in ways that could cause serious damage to image-generating AI models.

The Fugees singer is claiming his defense attorney botched his closing argument by using a proprietary prototype AI program.

There are still significant doubts that the Minnesotan has the near-unanimous GOP support needed to secure the gavel from the full House.

Economists first underestimated inflation, then underestimated consumers and the labor market. The key question is why. (It’s because you’re treating economics as a hard science when it’s really just vibes)

Democrats routinely remind us there's no limit to the amount of money they'll spend building up our military and those of our allies. There's no limit to what they'll do for corporations for the sake of the economy. There's no limit to the compromises they'll make with our oppressors. There's only a limit to how much they'll do for us. There's a limit to how much they'll spend on our needs. There's a limit to how hard they'll fight.

Attorney Jenna Ellis has pleaded guilty to a felony charge over efforts to overturn Donald Trump’s 2020 election loss in Georgia and says tearfully she looks back with “deep remorse.”

The Royal Navy is ending its century-old tradition of having Chinese servants on warships amid fears that they could be forced to spy for Beijing. Hundreds of Chinese laundrymen have worked on Britain’s warships since the 1930s, with most hired from Hong Kong to wash and press sailor’s uniforms and officers’ white tablecloths. Nepalese Gurkhas will replace them due to fears that Beijing could threaten the servants’ families in China to make those on board ships pass on Royal Navy secrets, The Sun has reported.

Hitler and his birthplace, Austria, were broadcast on video boards as part of a pregame quiz.