A follower of the feverish conspiracy theory QAnon is currently leading an Assembly race for a historically blue seat in South Brooklyn.

“They’re saying, ‘Stay in the fight!’ ” one campaign source told CNN. “Hard for people to stay in the fight when they’ll be unemployed a week from today.” This source also said that campaign leadership noted the lackluster attendance at Monday’s staff meeting, which was announced with just 15 minutes’ notice. With the uncertain prospect of continued employment with the campaign, many staffers are on the hunt for a new job. That, too, is getting some in trouble. Soon after the staff meeting, campaign manager Stepien’s assistant shouted at a campaign staffer for printing their resume in the office.

Thirty years after its finale, ‘Mr. Belvedere’ — and this legendary testicular mishap — has become part of internet lore and even slang. Is any of it true?

Keep your masks on, everybody.

People who attended the president’s Election Night watch party have begun testing positive.

Researchers at the University of Pittsburgh School of Medicine describe, in the journal Science, a new method to extract tiny but extremely powerful SARS-CoV-2 antibody fragments from llamas, which could be fashioned into inhalable therapeutics with the potential to prevent and treat COVID-19.

Harvard spent months planning a fall semester in the hopes of avoiding a repeat of the spring, when workers were exposed to the full force of the pandemic — including at least one who contracted COVID-19 after cleaning President Lawrence Bacow’s residence on March 19. Yet this fall, workers continue to face new iterations of the same anxieties over workplace safety and economic security. In the first week of August, Harvard University Dining Services employees received emails and phone calls to report for training on Aug. 20. After a six month hiatus, they were returning to work. Anabela A. and Christopher M. Pappas, a married couple who have worked for HUDS for a combined seven decades, were first told by the University that everyone would be tested before returning. For Anabela, who has Type I diabetes and is thus potentially at increased risk of severe illness from COVID-19, the protocol was a relief: She could finally return safely to the students and job that she cherished. But five days before the training, rumors began to swirl: There were some difficulties administering the tests. Through phone calls from House building management, the Pappases learned that HUDS workers were not required to get tested before returning. Instead, they would receive coronavirus tests immediately as the first part of training. Worried for her safety, Anabela decided not to go to training. Citing doctor’s notes and her diabetes, she asked to delay her start until all dining hall workers had been tested. Her request was refused: Human resources, she says, told her “you’re either in or you’re out.” Only after what her husband describes as “a bit of an arm wrestle” with HR, she received — and is still on — paid leave. But for many other employees, that wasn’t an option — they had to report to work to claim their job and wages. “They didn’t give us a choice to come back,” says Emily, a HUDS employee in Quincy House who spoke under the condition of anonymity to protect her privacy. “You either came back or, you know, you lost your pay.”

An off-duty Forest Grove police officer faces a criminal mischief allegation after a resident reported that he stumbled into the family’s driveway early Halloween morning, banged and kicked at their front door and yelled at them to fight. Forest Grove police quickly caught the alleged intruder about 50 yards away and recognized him as one of their own, even giving Officer Steven Teets a ride to his nearby house, investigators confirmed Monday... Police also don’t have body camera video of Teets' escort home because the officer who picked him up and gave him a ride home had a body camera that was not recording, a potential violation of department policy that’s now under investigation, officials said...

At the start of the pandemic, comedy writer Joey Clift set out to harness a nation’s boredom by embarking upon a populist campaign to create a full album for every state.

Kel Murphy-Duford — the 30-year-old man who had been unconscious and on a ventilator at Harborview Medical Center, following his arrest on the evening of Nov. 4 — now appears to be awake and is recuperating. He has since been discharged from the hospital, according to Harborview’s media department. Seattle Police Department (SPD) officers originally arrested Murphy-Duford on the evening of Nov. 4, claiming he was engaging in property damage. During his arrest, Murphy-Duford apparently suffered a medical emergency that rendered him unconscious, but it is unclear what triggered the emergency. Emergency personnel allegedly said that the man had a seizure. He was subsequently taken to Harborview, where he remained unconscious on a ventilator for several days. In a brief post shared on the afternoon of Nov. 7 on the GoFundMe page set up for him, Murphy-Duford said that SPD was withholding his insulin delivery system until Nov. 10. Murphy-Duford is diabetic, as his lawyers shared in an email forwarded to the Emerald on the evening of Nov. 6. Murphy-Duford’s post on the GoFundMe page did not specify why SPD is withholding his medical property or how he was getting his insulin.

Some lawyers at Jones Day and Porter Wright, which have filed suits about the 2020 vote, said they were worried about undermining the electoral system.

The Philadelphia site of Rudy Giuliani’s speech is being put to another use.

There are two more reasons to love Australia's fluffiest aeronautical marsupials after the discovery that there are actually three species of greater glider, not one as previously assumed.

House Democratic campaign chief Cheri Bustos announced Monday that she would not seek reelection, days after an unexpected string of losses that could end up costing the caucus nearly a dozen seats, according to multiple sources. Bustos’ campaign arm has faced intense scrutiny since Democrats’ losses on Tuesday, with battleground Democrats arguing she did little to protect them from stinging GOP attacks and that she pursued an overly aggressive strategy in impossible-to-win districts in states like Texas and Arkansas. Democrats held onto control of the House but lost a net five seats, with more expected.

On any given trip to Green Fish Market in Oakland’s Chinatown, you might find Finnie Phung surrounded by tanks of fish, geoduck clams, and Dungeness crab, dressed in knee-high rain boots, rubber gloves, a face mask, and answering questions in Cantonese or English. To the casual shopper, the smell of the sea in the city’s busiest fish market might be penetrating. Not to Phung. “I have been working in this environment since I was a teenager,” she says proudly. A daughter of refugees from Vietnam, Phung runs this seafood market in the heart of Oakland Chinatown with her husband, while raising three children in the middle of a pandemic, and somehow maintaining a chipper outlook. She epitomizes the younger generation of Chinatown’s shopkeepers: social-media savvy, bilingual or trilingual, with a uniquely Asian American outlook. While San Francisco’s Chinatown is a well-known tourist destination, the century-old Oakland Chinatown is far less so. As with the Chinese American commercial strips of Philadelphia and Houston, most of the neighborhood businesses serve the community. As a first-generation immigrant from Taiwan, Oakland Chinatown feels like home to me, the best of living in the United States while still being able to get chicken feet, mangosteen, and star fruit, surrounded by familiar languages, only one of which is English. Those close ties may be why Oakland Chinatown, while significantly affected by the pandemic, may be able to weather the economic crisis better than Chinatowns in other cities. In fact, multi-generational businesses like Finnie’s market, passed down from parents or grandparents, say that immediate post-pandemic sales are at least as strong as before. Chinatown’s support of the Black Lives Matter protests that flowed through Oakland in May also show how intertwined the neighborhood feels with the broader city. 

Utopian societies in fiction rarely turn out to be as inviting as they first seem. It is a pattern centuries old; the utopia degenerates into an abominable society—or else it had always been abominable, and the reality had been hidden from view. Le Guin breaks the mould with Anarres, her imaginary society in The Dispossessed. Rather than attempting to prove utopias are impossible, she encourages us to reconsider exactly what it is that we view as one. Anarres is a believably flawed society, but one built on solidarity and equality.

While some have praised the new research for revealing the secret to why Indian cuisine is so delicious, this notion of layering many contrasting flavors and spices isn't unique to Indian cooking. In fact, most of the world's cuisines tend to follow that principle, says Tulasi Srinivas, an anthropologist at Emerson University who studies food and globalization. And up until the mid-1600s, European cuisine was the same way. In medieval Europe, those who could afford to do so would generously season their stews with saffron, cinnamon, cloves and ginger. Sugar was ubiquitous in savory dishes. And haute European cuisine, until the mid-1600s, was defined by its use of complex, contrasting flavors. "The real question, then, is why the wealthy, powerful West — with unprecedented access to spices from its colonies — became so fixated on this singular understanding of flavor," Srinivas says. The answer, it turns out, has just as much to do with economics, politics and religion as it does taste.

After an election campaign built on attacking the reputation of his rival’s son, Donald Trump is facing calls for a new legal investigation into his activities in Ukraine where he and his associates were looking for dirt on Hunter Biden. The Stories of our Times podcast has spoken to a Ukrainian businessman who has admitted, for the first time, that he was asked to lie about Hunter Biden’s business dealings to damage Joe Biden’s reputation. In return, he was promised a US visa and legal immunity.

David Bossie, an outside adviser to Donald Trump who is leading his post-election fight over vote counts, has tested positive for coronavirus, according to people familiar with the matter, the latest in a series of cases among the president’s circle. Bossie, who tested positive on Sunday, joins Housing and Urban Development Secretary Ben Carson and White House Chief of Staff Mark Meadows, who both contracted the virus in the past week.

Laughing at Republicans isn't just about kicking them when they're down. It's a little bit about that though.