After his parents fell seriously ill with Covid-19, Ajay Koli went on a desperate hunt for oxygen and medical care.

Imagine rearranging the deck chairs on the titanic and thinking you'll help the boat.

When the pandemic broke out last year, showmanship and event management were top priority. Essential tasks like factoring in expert advice were considered less glamorous. I had the unique opportunity to observe from within the functioning of the Narendra Modi administration for over two years, as head of the national public broadcaster. I resigned before my term, when I could take it no more. I witnessed at close quarters the collapse of the apparatus of governance, which invariably invites catastrophes of the type we are suffering now. At a conceptual level, the problem arose when the square peg of an American Presidential system that legitimised a highly personalised style of functioning was hammered into the round hole of the existing British-inspired Cabinet system. It does not require a very high IQ to realise that a vast and impossibly diverse country like India can function only through a ‘federal equilibrium’ and other impositions destroy a carefully crafted power/responsibility-sharing model, without a better alternative. The initial euphoria over the arrival of a decisive leadership after years of listless governance, however, gave way to another grim reality. Senior officials had hoped that Modi would deactivate his suspicious nature and curb his urge to centralise powers and demand unquestioned obedience—now that he had reached the pinnacle. They were soon disappointed, though he did slash through the proverbial inter-ministerial turf battles. But the frequency and intensity with which he started summoning secretaries directly for briefings and presentations were quite unusual, as no PM had tried such micro-management.

Advocates had viewed the West Virginia Democrat’s support as essential in the narrowly divided Senate. Sen. Joe Manchin III told reporters in his home state of West Virginia on Friday morning that he does not support the bill to make D.C. the nation’s 51st state, according to audio provided by the Democrat’s office and a report from WVNews. Manchin, a key swing vote in the closely divided Senate, said he believed a constitutional amendment, rather than legislation, would be required to admit D.C. as a state. His stance deals a major blow to statehood advocates who were hoping for his support after the bill passed the House last week.

You wouldn't think that chess players, who sit for hours on end and extend their arms only from time to time, would struggle with weight loss. But they do. Inside the very real, very bizarre metabolic phenomenon gripping chess.

Jason Furman, who headed the Council of Economic Advisors during the Obama years, told Yahoo Finance that the international community’s approach to Huawei serves as an example.

The NC House won’t take up a controversial bill that would have banned transgender girls from playing on women’s sports teams.

Promising Young Woman has the bright, alluring sheen of a pop confection. The paint-swatch spectrums of pink and blue—powder to electric neon, baby to deep navy—that dominate its color palette are both soothing to the eyes and in step with Instagram trends. Its soundtrack, packed with 21st-century bubblegum pop, imparts a similar sweetness. The title character wears fuzzy floral sweaters and sucks on red licorice, and every shade of girly, from kawaii to rococo, splashes across the screen at some point. Then there’s the cast, which is full of reassuringly familiar faces, from Adam Brody and Christopher Mintz-Plasse to Laverne Cox and Alison Brie. But the hard-candy shell that coats the film conceals a razor blade, ready to cleave the tongues of those entitled enough to chomp down without letting it melt in their mouths first.

As reported at Pitchfork and elsewhere, Lydia Lunch is selling the rights to her life’s work. According to a March 25 press release, this would transfer “all intellectual rights and copyright ownership” of “all of her written articles, compositions, the majority of her Master Recordings, books, artworks, photography and more.” This would include 61 published works, nearly 400 compositions, and Lydia’s “ownership interest” in 326 master recordings. The ultimate buyer—obviously a person of wealth and refined taste who would respect the cultural and historical significance of such a body of work—will be able to exploit the material as they see fit. Valuing transgressive art might have been a difficult thing in the past, but with a few decades of distance, what was once underground and perhaps violated cultural norms—like Fingered for instance—becomes history. (And in this case, it also gets uploaded to PornHub.)

Mitch McConnell's Re-Election: The Numbers Don't Add Up. How Does an 18% Approval Rating Result in a 58% Win for the Senator?

An Amazon spokeswoman, requesting anonymity even though she’s, you know, a spokeswoman, declined to comment on the new ruling or whether Amazon will appeal it to the state Supreme Court. She said only that “Amazon invests heavily in the safety and authenticity of all products offered in our store, including proactively vetting sellers and products before being listed, and continuously monitoring our store for signals of a concern.”

App delivery workers for DoorDash, Grubhub, Uber Eats, and other tech giants are fighting for a living wage, employment status, and the simple right to pee in privacy.

The day after the 2020 elections, Florida GOP Gov. Ron DeSantis took the stage to gloat. “People are actually looking at Florida and asking the question, why can’t these states be more like Florida?” he said during a November 4 press conference, as some other states were still tallying their votes. But as Republicans around the country rushed to respond to former President Trump’s lies that the election was stolen by passing significant new voting restrictions, DeSantis and Florida Republicans decided they wanted to be part of the fun.

Condom sales have been in a slump during the pandemic as people sheltered at home and put their sex life on hold. But now, as more Americans are getting vaccinated and Covid-19 safety restrictions are loosening, condom makers are no longer having trouble getting their sales up.

A little-known legal tool allows states to override progressive policies in cities.

What it was like to be in Mr. Bailey’s eighth grade English class.

The company that bottles Real Water faces a U.S. Food and Drug Administration probe and lawsuits alleging people were sickened and hospitalized.

The bill, which Gov. Ron DeSantis is expected to sign, is the latest Republican effort to restrict voting after the 2020 election. It will make Florida the first major swing state won by Donald Trump to pass such a law.

Shares of Lyft, Uber and DoorDash dipped Thursday after Secretary of Labor Marty Walsh told Reuters that gig workers should be classified as company employees.

The Daily Beast has obtained a confession letter that Joel Greenberg wrote after asking Roger Stone to help him obtain a pardon.