On Emmys night, Seth Rogen was trending on Twitter because, when he took the stage as a presenter, he said, “Let me start by saying there are way too many of us in this little room! What are we doing? They said this was outdoors! It’s not! They lied to us! We’re in a hermetically sealed tent right now. I would not have come to this. Why is there a roof?”

Exclusive: In his first meeting with the cohort of State Department staffers affected in Cuba and China, the secretary of state spent more than an hour offering reassurances and fielding questions. U.S. diplomats suffering from the unexplained “Havana Syndrome” used a tense meeting with Secretary of State Antony Blinken this month to voice growing dismay over continuing stigma and disbelief within the U.S. government about their injuries, more than four years after the incidents began. In his first meeting with the cohort of State Department staffers affected in Cuba and China, Blinken spent more than an hour offering reassurances and fielding questions, with most affected staffers joining remotely by phone. His message: Those suffering must be believed, and that the administration is doing all it can to investigate and provide care. But the FBI, which traveled multiple times to Havana to investigate, later issued a report that found no evidence of an attack and determined the staffers were most likely suffering from mass psychogenic illness, or mass hysteria. Diplomats have bristled at the fact the FBI did not directly interview the diplomats affected. On the Sept. 10 call, when Blinken asked how the department could reduce the skepticism, at least one diplomat encouraged the State Department to publicly refute that report.

The House of Representatives on Tuesday unanimously passed a bill that would authorize payments to those impacted by "Havana Syndrome" — a mysterious illness known to produce neurological symptoms that has affected scores of U.S. officials and personnel in multiple countries. The Helping American Victims Afflicted by Neurological Attacks Act, also known as the HAVANA Act, now goes to President Joe Biden's desk for approval. "There is no higher priority than protecting our people. None," Representative Adam Schiff, who chairs the House Intelligence Committee, said in a statement. "As we examine the cause of the illness known as Havana Syndrome, we must ensure those impacted get the care they deserve." The bill authorizes government agencies to pay personnel who suffered from injuries related to Havana Syndrome while on the job. Those affected both before and after the bill is enacted will be eligible for payments. Symptoms of "Havana Syndrome" have included severe headaches, dizziness, tinnitus, visual and hearing problems, vertigo and cognitive issues. Some have even been diagnosed with brain injuries. Last year, the National Academies of Sciences, in an assessment that was requested by the State Department, said the "most plausible" cause of the officials' symptoms was "directed, pulsed, radiofrequency energy."

Robin Steenman, an Air Force veteran and white mother of three, is fed up with the way public schools in her community of Franklin, Tennessee are teaching kids about race.

Taking a card with your opponents' pitching strategy on it—fair or foul? It looks like we may have another ethics discussion brewing in baseball. With the memory of the Astros' sign-stealing scandal still very fresh in the minds of players and fans alike, the Rays and Blue Jays have themselves mired in a conflict centered on gaining the upper hand. This time, it's Tampa Bay's Gold Glove center fielder Kevin Kiermaier who's the focal point of the discussion. During Monday's game, Kiermaier scored in the sixth inning after sliding to avoid the tag of Toronto catcher Alejandro Kirk. On the tag attempt, a card fell out of Kirk's wristband and landed directly in front of Kiermaier, who was still on the ground. After looking at it for a beat, he picked it up and took it into the dugout.

There was a strange, circular movement between tiki food and American Chinese food. Trader Vic’s created tiki food by making American Chinese food seem more tropical; American Chinese restaurants took his dishes right back and made them more American Chinese.

Whatever cryptocurrency might someday be For All Mankind, it is most urgently and avidly in this moment something that people tell weird lies about in hopes of getting richer.

Six people overdosed in Fairfax County, Virginia, early Monday morning. Police say they believe the group had cocaine laced with fentanyl. News4’s Pat Collins reports.

To be clear, I don’t think any of these are real

The industrial trailblazer made waves in the post-punk era and released landmark electronic records as Sandoz and Sweet Exorcist

Joe Biden’s spending bill isn’t extreme, no matter what moderate Democrats say. But saying that piece of legislation is the largest expansion of social welfare in the U.S. since Reagan is a bit like saying a canine is the world’s largest toy poodle. Even if Congress passes the Build Back Better agenda in its entirety, America’s safety net will remain more threadbare than those of comparably developed countries. The $3.5 trillion reconciliation bill would guarantee Americans 12 weeks of paid family leave; the OECD average is 18 weeks. Biden’s child allowance would be a landmark achievement for the U.S. But such child benefits have long been standard in Canada and Western Europe. And the reconciliation bill’s version of the child allowance isn’t even permanent — it actually expires after 2025. Prekindergarten is a similar story. Thanks to their relatively higher levels of investment in early-childhood education, the average preschool-enrollment rate among 3-year olds in OECD countries was 70 percent in 2017; in the U.S., that figure was 40 percent. When House progressives say, “$3.5 trillion was the compromise,” they’re being both serious and reasonable. Thanks to Senate moderates’ filibuster fetish, this reconciliation bill is poised to be the last piece of major legislation passed in Joe Biden’s first two years in office. And since the GOP’s odds of retaking the House in 2023 are very high, the reconciliation bill could very likely be the only major partisan law that Democratic voters get out of the Biden presidency. It could be a long time before Democrats boast a federal trifecta again. Progressives have nevertheless agreed to settle for a bill that increases federal spending by only 5 percent over a decade, leaves most of Donald Trump’s corporate tax cut intact, and keeps the American welfare state stingier than those of its less-wealthy peer nations. And Joe Manchin and Kyrsten Sinema consider this offer such an insult to their values and priorities they’d rather make Biden a failed president than attach their names to it. With moderates like these, who needs reactionaries?

Professors are struggling to teach Gen Z

In her new memoir, Cassandra Peterson, better known as Elvira, the Mistress Of The Dark herself, opens up about her 19-year-long relationship with a woman

A year without live music has been a disaster. So has corporate power in streaming, recording, and ticketing. Antitrust may be the only solution. For decades, corporate concentration and the rise of streaming music platforms has shifted power to tech giants, and to a conglomerate that, through the staggering failures of US monopoly regulation, has come to dominate terrestrial and satellite radio, concert promotion, ticketing, artist management, and venue ownership, essentially every revenue-generating slice of the industry. Three major record labels produce two-thirds of all music consumed in America. They are the most powerful buyer of music and talent, and they use that power to prioritize a handful of mega-stars and pop hits. They pitch music into massive radio conglomerates and streaming platforms that control how music is consumed, and they collect an ever-growing share of industry revenue. Concerts, a crucial space where independent venues and artists have largely sidestepped corporate gatekeepers, are increasingly threatened by Covid shutdowns and the prospect that Live Nation and other Wall Street–backed giants will either buy them out or put them out of business.

Haitian migrants who were being transported on a federally contracted private bus away from the border revolted during the ride and overtook control of the commercial vehicle before escaping, according to two law enforcement officials.

An independent report released Monday criticized the Oakland Police Department for its slow response to the social media scandal that resulted in 9 officers being disciplined.

A new dispensary is opening its doors on the Downtown Mall in Charlottesville as marijuana laws across Virginia change. Skooma is opening as a boutique CBD dispensary for now, but owner David Treccariche plans to be ready to sell marijuana once retail is legal.

COVID-19 unleashed new demand for homes, made the well-off wealthier, and fueled extreme bidding wars. The result? The $1-million home is everywhere.

Mark Zuckerberg, Facebook’s chief executive, signed off last month on a new initiative code-named Project Amplify. The effort, which was hatched at an internal meeting in January, had a specific purpose: to use Facebook’s News Feed, the site’s most important digital real estate, to show people positive stories about the social network. The idea was that pushing pro-Facebook news items — some of them written by the company — would improve its image in the eyes of its users, three people with knowledge of the effort said. But the move was sensitive because Facebook had not previously positioned the News Feed as a place where it burnished its own reputation. Several executives at the meeting were shocked by the proposal, one attendee said.

The Mistress of the Dark opens up about her secret relationship with another woman in Yours Cruelly, Elvira.