"In the old days, we only got oranges as presents—and we were happy about it!” This is a phrase you sometimes hear when an older person criticizes the lavish masses of gifts today’s children receive. What they rarely mention is the gift wrapping. Let’s say you wanted to give five oranges as a gift: How would you arrange the fruits so that they consumed as little space and wrapping paper as possible? As it turns out, there’s a lot of math behind this seemingly innocuous question. After all, it took more than 400 years to prove something fruit merchants have known since time immemorial: that the optimal stacking of infinite balls in three-dimensional space is achieved by arranging them in a pyramid shape. A verified solution to that puzzle, known as Kepler’s conjecture, was not published until 2017. The situation is quite different when considering only a finite number of objects, however.

Chef Liz Johnson accused her husband and business partner, Will Aghajanian, of killing their cat. That’s just one part of the story.

The multi-hyphenate painter, musician, and director (to name just a few of his hats) talks in-depth about his life, career, and the new season of “Painting With John.”

A veteran American Airlines pilot who is also a Lieutenant Colonel in the U.S. Air Force in his 20th year as an F-16 instructor at the Naval Air Station Joint Reserve Base in Fort Worth, Texas, has filed a class action lawsuit against American Airlines, claiming the carrier invested millions of dollars of employees’ retirement…

One ride-goer goes behind the curtain at one of America's most popular amusement parks, shattering the magic of the experience.

Mathew Bianchi became a Staten Island traffic cop in 2017, two years after joining the New York police department, assigned to enforcing traffic violations and issuing tickets. In the first two years on that beat, he received stellar performance evaluations. But in November 2018 – a year into his career in the traffic unit – Bianchi issued a ticket to a civilian who held a New York City police department laminated courtesy card, an unofficial credential issued to NYPD officers based on their union affiliation that can then be distributed to family members and friends to carry with them. What happened next is the subject of a lawsuit against the city and a police captain. According to Bianchi, who is Cuban-American, courtesy cards are used to maintain a system of impunity – a “get-of-jail-free card” for families and friends of NYPD officers to avoid traffic tickets, a growing source of revenue for the city.

In the spring of 2021, the Atlanta Police Foundation announced an attractive deal for city taxpayers. If the city put up $30 million for a public safety training center, the nonprofit and its philanthropic partners would handle the rest of the project’s $90 million price tag. That promise was repeated month after month, year after year, by one mayor and then the next. Today, the Atlanta Police Foundation still asks for donations to the project on a fundraising page that says the city will only contribute $30 million to the cause. But that’s not true. And it hasn’t been true for years. Last month, city officials publicly acknowledged for the first time what some decision makers have known since at least August 2021 — the actual cost to taxpayers for the facility is expected to be more than double what officials have continually said, an Atlanta Journal-Constitution review of public documents has found. The additional cost comes in the form of $1.2 million in annual payments to the Atlanta Police Foundation, repaying the nonprofit organization for the bulk of its contribution toward construction. Against that backdrop, Atlanta City Council members on Monday are set to consider a proposal that dedicates up to $67 million in city funding to the construction and operation of the facility.

A report from the frontlines of ATL’s Pack City Hall event: "We have packed the house far too many times."

A former FBI agent convicted in one of the most notorious spying cases in American history has died in prison. Robert Hanssen took more than $1.4 million in cash and diamonds to trade secrets with Moscow. Prison officials say Hanssen was found unresponsive in his cell at a federal prison in Florence, Colorado. He is believed to have died of natural causes. That's according to a person familiar with the matter who was not authorized to publicly discuss details of Hanssen's death and spoke to The Associated Press on condition of anonymity. He had been serving a sentence of life in prison without possibility of parole since 2002.

If actors go on strike they would join Hollywood's writers, who are entering their sixth week of a walkout.

A Department Homeland Security agency’s intelligence report on “Stop Cop City” protesters copied a sentence from far-right provocateur Andy Ngo.

Late last month, during yet another inexplicable rebranding exercise, HBO’s Max streaming service changed the way it organizes film credits. Rather than separate out discrete production categories for users to peruse, Max’s credits lumped writers and directors together under an ominous header, dubbing them “creators.” The recategorization enraged writers, filmmakers, and the Directors Guild of America. Within a few hours, Max’s parent company, Warner Bros., apologized for the move, calling it “an oversight in the technical transition from HBO Max to Max.” The change—made by a company with a market cap that is approaching $30 billion during a contentious writers’ strike—felt petty and vindictive to Hollywood professionals. Max restructuring its credits was interpreted as the studios saying the quiet part out loud: that the craft and professional expertise required to make art are unimportant, and that the distinctions and divisions of labor in the creative process are merely the obsessions of sensitive artisans. Put another way: In the algorithmic age of generative AI, there are no auteurs, just creators who make content. Tell ’em to smash those “Like” and “Subscribe” buttons, Marty Scorsese! As fleeting controversies go, this one rather perfectly encapsulates the anxieties of our immediate technological moment—one where media, entertainment, and art are all shaped, and ultimately subsumed, by the infinite scroll.

Moses Lake police nearly beat Joseph Zamora to death. Then he was charged with and convicted of assaulting an officer. He served a full prison term. Then Grant County prosecutors asked for the case to be dismissed. Then the state Supreme Court threw out Zamora’s convictions, because the prosecutor used racial bias during the trial. It’s been more than six years since the beating that left Zamora in a medically induced coma in the ICU for a month, but Grant County prosecutors are reprosecuting him for the same alleged crimes. Even though Zamora already served a full prison sentence. Even though the same prosecutors previously asked to have the case dismissed. The lingering question: Why? Why recharge a man when even if he is convicted, he wouldn’t serve any more time? Why recharge a man when the prosecutor previously wrote, “it is no longer in the interests of justice for the State to pursue this case?” Grant County Prosecutor Kevin McCrae has declined to say, citing rules that limit what he can say about an ongoing case. But in documents McCrae wrote last fall, shortly after he decided to recharge Zamora, he explains his rationale for beginning the prosecution anew. In the documents, newly obtained through public records requests, McCrae wrote he decided to recharge Zamora, in part, because Zamora had not taken responsibility for his actions. After the Supreme Court vacated Zamora’s convictions, McCrae wrote, Zamora left him a voicemail “demanding” that he charge the officer who beat him up with attempted murder. Zamora, in court, also asked when he could file a tort claim, a prerequisite for filing a civil lawsuit, against the city and its Police Department, McCrae said. Zamora, he wrote, had not learned his lesson.

The city has housed or sheltered around 30 of the roughly 200 homeless people living by the creek.

The largest cryptocurrency exchange in the world, Binance, made plans to use its U.S. presence to deflect regulators and profit from American investors in spite of regulatory restrictions.

Polls see Germany's center-left coalition government in free fall while the far-right populist AfD is reaping the benefits. It currently polls on par with Chancellor Olaf Scholz's Social Democrats.

Thousands of goats who help reduce wildfire risk in Berkeley, Oakland and beyond are having to chew through thicker vegetation this spring.

The union representing the company’s newsroom employees has urged a vote of no-confidence against the C.E.O. at a shareholder meeting on Monday.

Tina Satter’s film “Reality” on HBO captures the cruelty of the surveillance state.

On a two-block stretch of Brownsville in April, the police stepped aside and let residents respond to 911 calls. It was a bold experiment that some believe could redefine law enforcement in New York City.