During this massive glaciation event, our planet resembled a big snowball, its oceans sealed from the Sun by more than a kilometre (0.6 miles) of solid ice. And then, in a geologic 'flash', our world began to inexplicably thaw, allowing life to thrive on land for the first time.

Myanmar's military has taken control of the country after Aung San Suu Kyi and other political leaders were arrested in the early hours. The coup comes after tensions rose between the civilian government and the military following a disputed election. Hours after the arrests, military TV confirmed a state of emergency had been declared for one year.

Myanmar's military seized power on Monday in a coup against the democratically elected government of Nobel laureate Aung San Suu Kyi, who was detained along with other leaders of her National League for Democracy (NLD) party in early morning raids. The army said it had carried out the detentions in response to "election fraud", handing power to military chief Min Aung Hlaing and imposing a state of emergency for one year, according to a statement on a military-owned television station. A military spokesman did not answer phone calls seeking further comment. Phone lines to the capital Naypyitaw and the main commercial centre of Yangon were not reachable, and state TV went off air hours before parliament had been due to sit for the first time since the NLD's landslide election win in November, viewed as a referendum on Suu Kyi's fledgling democratic government.

By Thursday the 12th of November, President Donald J. Trump’s election lawyers were concluding that the reality he faced was the inverse of the narrative he was promoting in his comments and on Twitter. There was no substantial evidence of election fraud, and there were nowhere near enough “irregularities” to reverse the outcome in the courts. Mr. Trump did not, could not, win the election, not by “a lot” or even a little. His presidency would soon be over. Allegations of Democratic malfeasance had disintegrated in embarrassing fashion. A supposed suitcase of illegal ballots in Detroit proved to be a box of camera equipment. “Dead voters” were turning up alive in television and newspaper interviews. The week was coming to a particularly demoralizing close: In Arizona, the Trump lawyers were preparing to withdraw their main lawsuit as the state tally showed Joseph R. Biden Jr. leading by more than 10,000 votes, against the 191 ballots they had identified for challenge. As he met with colleagues to discuss strategy, the president’s deputy campaign manager, Justin Clark, was urgently summoned to the Oval Office. Mr. Trump’s personal lawyer, Rudolph W. Giuliani, was on speaker phone, pressing the president to file a federal suit in Georgia and sharing a conspiracy theory gaining traction in conservative media — that Dominion Systems voting machines had transformed thousands of Trump votes into Biden votes. Mr. Clark warned that the suit Mr. Giuliani had in mind would be dismissed on procedural grounds. And a state audit was barreling toward a conclusion that the Dominion machines had operated without interference or foul play. Mr. Giuliani called Mr. Clark a liar, according to people with direct knowledge of the exchange. Mr. Clark called Mr. Giuliani something much worse. And with that, the election-law experts were sidelined in favor of the former New York City mayor, the man who once again was telling the president what he wanted to hear.

A hacker took control of people's internet-connected chastity cages and demanded a ransom to be paid in Bitcoin to unlock it. "Your cock is mine now," the hacker told one of the victims, according to a screenshot of the conversation obtained by a security researcher that goes by the name Smelly and is the founder of vx-underground, a website that collects malware samples. In October of last year, security researchers found that the manufacturer of an Internet of Things chastity cage—a sex toy that users put around their penis to prevent erections that is used in the BDSM community and can be unlocked remotely—had left an API exposed, giving malicious hackers a chance to take control of the devices. That's exactly what happened, according to a security researcher who obtained screenshots of conversations between the hacker and several victims, and according to victims interviewed by Motherboard.

Rep. Adam Kinzinger voted to impeach Trump. In response, somme of his relatives voted to disown him.

John Weaver, a longtime G.O.P. operative who advised John McCain and John Kasich, made sexual overtures to young men, sometimes offering to help them get work in politics.

In the bare-knuckle boxing world, Diego Garijo is known as the ferocious Dos Pistolas. In drag, he's just called Lola.

The University of California, Davis, is providing free testing, masks and quarantine housing to tens of thousands of people who live nearby.

He made hits such as I Think We’re Alone Now and Mony Mony, but a gangster label boss kept up to $40m of his royalties. As his complete Roulette recordings are rereleased, why no hard feelings?

Ahead of a new Blu-ray release of Southland Tales coming out this week, The A.V. Club talked to director Richard Kelly and a few others involved in the making of the movie about its creation, its legacy, and—against all odds—its future.

"Sophie was a pioneer of a new sound, one of the most influential artists in the last decade. Not only for ingenious production and creativity but also for the message and visibility that was achieved. An icon of liberation," the artist’s publicist's statement read.

So why do we talk about Pfizer or Moderna, when these should be the people’s vaccines?

In their quest for Republican backing, Democrats say they missed opportunities in 2009 for a stronger response to the Great Recession. They’re determined not to repeat the mistake.

The high-water mark for socialists elected to national office is in step with a proud tradition in American politics.

Federal law enforcement shifted resources last year in response to Donald Trump’s insistence that the radical left endangered the country. Meanwhile, right-wing extremism was building ominously.

As a Long Island kid in the late 1970s and ’80s, Robert Siegel would lay under his covers at night and listen to sports-talk radio. He still remembers the callers’ thick accents. “Always guys from Queens, always guys from Brooklyn,” the filmmaker says. “I was living my sheltered, suburban Jewish experience. Those people in other parts of New York were so … exotic.” They were the kinds of memorably downtrodden minor figures that populated Siegel’s favorite movies: Midnight Cowboy, Taxi Driver, Saturday Night Fever. But he’d never seen a film about the type of aging schlub who’d phone WFAN and patiently stay on hold for hours just for a chance to air his grievances with pro athletes who weren’t even listening. So in the early 2000s, while serving as the editor in chief of satirical publication The Onion, he decided to write one himself. “Those voices I heard were ingrained in my head, burned into my brain from my teenage years,” says Siegel, who as a child shunned the mediocre Jets and Giants for the Steelers. “It very easily translated into a ’70s-style, gritty character study.”

Former President Donald J. Trump has abruptly parted ways with five lawyers handling his impeachment defense, just over a week before the Senate trial is set to begin, people familiar with the situation said on Saturday. Those departures include his lead lawyer, Butch Bowers, whose hiring was announced last week, a person familiar with the situation said. Four other lawyers who were reported to be joining, including Deborah Barbier, a criminal defense lawyer in South Carolina, are also leaving, according to multiple people familiar with the situation.

Dodger Stadium’s mass COVID-19 vaccination site was shut down Saturday afternoon as dozens of protesters gathered at the entrance, stalling hundreds of motorists who had been waiting in line for hours. The Los Angeles Fire Department closed the entrance to the stadium at about 2 p.m. as a precaution, officials said. The demonstrators included members of anti-vaccine and far-right groups. While some carried signs decrying the COVID-19 vaccine and shouting for people not to get the shots, there were no incidents of violence.

The Kansas Board of Regents decided to give administrators at the flagship university and the five other state universities the board oversees the power to annul tenure for two years, if they choose to do so. This measure is supposed to be a way of coping with budget deficits. At the University of Kansas in Lawrence, where I teach, we have been told that we are running a $74-million deficit, which is projected to grow further as our state’s budget targets higher ed with one of the largest cuts in our history. If you have any sense of what most faculty salaries are, this number — $74 million — boggles the mind. How many faculty members would our institution need to fire to make a dent in that amount? What would our campus look like on the other end of the slashing? How can we maintain our research and teaching standards with a skeleton staff? What prospective faculty members would choose to come to an institution willing to discard them after decades of loyal service? Will the prestigious Association of American Universities still have us as a member? (If only there was some kind of time-tested way for workers to come together to support one another and oppose things like this...)