Social Responsibility

Steve Huckins, a native of Oregon, was preparing to move across the country when he went on Facebook to post a goodbye letter of sorts to his home state.“I had planned to die here,” Mr. Huckins, 59, wrote. “It’s a beautiful state. The mountains, the lakes, the rivers, the beaches. All are overshadowed by the societal and political climate.”Mr. Huckins and his wife, Ginger, were leaving Portland, Ore., one of the most progressive cities in the United States. They said Portland’s tolerance of homeless encampments, along with the open use of hard drugs and rising crime, had filled them with…

Shortly after midnight on Tuesday, 17,000 feet up in the Himalayas just south of India’s border with China, some slight shift started an avalanche. Snow, ice and boulders slid into a giant glacial lake a mile below, causing it to burst its banks. From there, catastrophes multiplied as the water cascaded down mountain valleys below.At least 26 people were killed in the tiny state of Sikkim, and another 142 are missing. But as much as the disaster was a shock, it was hardly a surprise. An academic paper published four years earlier predicted just such a sequence of events in…

It was 4:20 a.m., long before dawn on Monday, when a driver approached the house of a missing girl in upstate New York, placing a note in the black mailbox before darting off through a dark spider web of country roads.It might have been a note of condolence, or sympathy or even a tip. Instead, it was a ransom note, the state police said, one that led to the dramatic rescue later that day of the 9-year-old girl, found hidden in a cupboard in a rundown camper, just 14 miles from her home.The story of how state troopers, S.W.A.T. teams,…

Several teachers whom I spoke with or who responded to my questionnaire mentioned policies stating that students cannot get lower than a 50 percent on any assignment, even if the work was never done, in some cases. A teacher from Chapel Hill, N.C., who filled in the questionnaire’s “name” field with “No, no, no,” said the 50 percent floor and “NO attendance enforcement” leads to a scenario where “we get students who skip over 100 days, have a 50 percent, complete a couple of assignments to tip over into 59.5 percent and then pass.”It’s hard to find national data about…

Former President Donald J. Trump went on trial this month in a New York courtroom, facing a threat to the business empire that informed his public persona and undergirded his run for the White House. Friday was the trial’s fifth day.Much of the action happened outside the courtroom on Friday. Mr. Trump’s legal team tried and failed to pause the trial itself, but succeeded in delaying the implementation of a sweeping order by the trial judge that had been expected to have a serious impact on Mr. Trump’s real estate business.The trial stems from a lawsuit brought last year by…

The boy had seemed destined for a life of affluence and earthly pursuits. Born into the family behind a major mining conglomerate in Mongolia, he might have been picked to someday lead the company from its steel-and-glass headquarters in the country’s capital.Instead, the 8-year-old is now at the heart of a struggle between the Dalai Lama and the Chinese Communist Party.He was just a toddler when everything changed. On a visit to a vast monastery in the capital city of Ulaanbaatar, known for a towering Buddha statue gilded in gold, his father brought him and his twin brother into a…

Shortly after he left office, former President Donald J. Trump shared apparently classified information about American nuclear submarines with an Australian businessman during an evening of conversation at Mar-a-Lago, his private club and residence in Florida, according to two people familiar with the matter.The businessman, Anthony Pratt, a billionaire member of Mar-a-Lago who runs one of the world’s largest cardboard companies, went on to share the sensitive details about the submarines with several others, the people said. Mr. Trump’s disclosures, they said, potentially endangered the U.S. nuclear fleet.Federal prosecutors working for the special counsel, Jack Smith, learned about Mr. Trump’s…

You can analyze the circus in the House of Representatives in terms of personalities (the bland ambition of Kevin McCarthy colliding with the antic, made-for-television career of Matt Gaetz) or in terms of the nature of the Republican coalition (united only by anti-liberalism and rabble-rousing, and therefore held hostage to the most shameless rabble-rouser).But the substance in the standoff, the posturing over what kind of spending cuts House Republicans should demand or accept, isn’t incidental either. Along with decrepit presidents and creepy deathwatches around senators and Supreme Court justices, chaotic clown-show debates over fiscal policy are part of what you…

On Wednesday morning, two Republicans who hours earlier had toppled Kevin McCarthy as speaker of the House made a well-worn trek to a 19th-century brick townhouse a few blocks away from the Capitol and entered the cluttered sanctuary of Stephen K. Bannon’s recording studio.Representatives Matt Gaetz of Florida, the instigator of the rebellion, and Nancy Mace of South Carolina, one of seven other Republican defectors, huddled with Mr. Bannon for a morning meeting ahead of a joint appearance on his “War Room” podcast.“Tectonic plate shift here in the imperial capital,” Mr. Bannon told his listeners at showtime, while directing them…