The Uplift: Trooper the dog

Republicans in Nevada received good news on Friday when it was announced that they have significantly closed the voter registration gap in the Silver State.

The Pennsylvania Supreme Court shot down a second attempt to remove the requirement for mail-in ballots to feature a handwritten date.

The wife of a U.S. pastor killed on a missionary trip with his family has been arrested. A close friend of the victim says the pastor “genuinely cared about those less privileged."

HBO's Bill Maher expressed his frustration with President Biden over his "garbage" comment about Trump supporters, suggesting it could impact the election.

A one-time Democrat living in Israel says he proudly cast his ballot for former President Trump in a swing state — and says he is far from alone.

An elite Chicago private school where a bullied student committed suicide has a history of harassment and antisemitism, according to parents and new details in an ongoing lawsuit. 

The four members of indie rock band Hippo Campus met while attending a Minnesota performing arts high school, and hit it big with the release of their first EP after graduating. Since then, they've just gotten bigger and better, selling out shows around the world and putting out multiple studio albums, including their newest release, "Flood," which was hailed as their best work yet. From "Flood," here is Hippo Campus with "Madman."

“I must fight for the rest of the hostages – this is my life,” said Mia Schem.

The Washington Commanders meet the New York Giants in NFL Week 9. Here’s a look at the key matchups, odds, how to watch and more in our ultimate game day guide.

Washington went from long-snapper Camaron Cheeseman, now studying to be a dentist, to future Hall of Fame linebacker Bobby Wagner.

IVF has become a key issue on the campaign trail ahead of the 2024 election, with Democrats vowing to protect it and Senate Republicans voting to block a bill that would protect its availability. Netflix's upcoming film "Joy" celebrates the pioneering work of IVF's developers. Star Bill Nighy shares more about the film's unlikely story and the hostility the real-life scientists faced.

The move carries significant electoral implications, with Michigan part of the Democrats "blue wall" of must-win states in the 2024 presidential election.

Day of the Dead, or Dia de Los Muertos, is a celebration that honors the dead. Many of the traditions honoring the holiday come from Latin America, but these days, those who celebrate don't have to leave the United States to mark the holiday.

When Nets coach Jordi Fernandez has a full roster, he’s going to have some tough calls to make.

Thousands of hotels now rent their pools, spas, office spaces and cabanas to guests without requiring them to reserve a room.

Five women have been attacked by strangers with criminal histories over the last three months in Nashville, Tennessee, as FOX 17 Nashville first reported.

You can do better than what your polling station offers. We’ve got you covered.

This is an edition of The Wonder Reader, a newsletter in which our editors recommend a set of stories to spark your curiosity and fill you with delight. Sign up here to get it every Saturday morning.You know America’s most controversial appliance when you hear it: The leaf blower is loud, it’s messy, and it’s a hazard to the environment. But Ian Bogost recently argued that we’re thinking about leaf blowers all wrong: “Excessive use of blowers, not the tools themselves, should be taken as the villain here,” he wrote. A full ban on the appliance is impossible as long as yards are part of American life, so limiting its use would be the best path forward.Today’s newsletter explores the appliances we’ve relied on for decades, and those that claim to usher in new ways of living—with varied success.On Our AppliancesA Defense of the Leaf BlowerBy Ian BogostReassessing America’s most hated applianceRead the article.A $700 Kitchen Tool That’s Meant to Be Seen, Not UsedBy Ellen CushingKitchenAid’s newest stand mixer seems like a great appliance—for people who don’t actually bake.Read the article.The Microwave Makes No SenseBy Jacob SweetEvery kitchen appliance is getting smart—except one.Read the article.Still Curious? Your TV is too good for you: 4K resolution is a sham, Ian Bogost argues. KitchenAid did it right 87 years ago: Modern appliances are rarely built to last. They could learn something from the KitchenAid stand mixer, Anna Kramer argues. Other Diversions The silliest, sexiest show of the year Why you might need an adventure Why are baseball players always eating? P.S. Courtesy of John Ambrose I recently asked readers to share a photo of something that sparks their sense of awe in the world. John Ambrose, 72, wrote that he took this photo “looking due west from my front door in Glastonbury, CT. The sky kept changing and went from an orange to a deep pink.” I’ll continue to feature your responses in the coming weeks. If you’d like to share, reply to this email with a photo and a short description so we can share your wonder with fellow readers in a future edition of this newsletter or on our website. Please include your name (initials are okay), age, and location. By doing so, you agree that The Atlantic has permission to publish your photo and publicly attribute the response to you, including your first name and last initial, age, and/or location that you share with your submission.— Isabel

On December 14, 2016, President-elect Donald Trump crammed a handful of America’s most recognizable moguls into a conference room on the 25th floor of his Manhattan headquarters. The group included Amazon’s Jeff Bezos, Tesla’s Elon Musk, and Apple’s Tim Cook. Despite having just won the most powerful position on the planet, Trump assumed a sycophantic pose.“There’s nobody like you in the world!” Trump exclaimed. “In the world!”He wanted them to know: “I’m here to help you folks do well.”At that early date, Trump was a somewhat unknown quantity, at least as far as these billionaires were concerned. They couldn’t be sure if he was actually aligned with their interests, given his support of tariffs, hostility toward immigration, and fulminations against globalism. Besides, it was an especially inflamed moment in American politics, and the executives had reason to fear that their workforces, not to mention their customers, might furiously protest an intimate working relationship with Trump. So after the meeting adjourned, Trump’s offer of an alliance was left dangling.If Trump prevails on November 5, a version of the partnership he hinted at eight years ago will finally emerge, and in a far more robust form than he could have ever imagined at the time. That’s because many of the wealthiest Americans have reached the cold conclusion that the opportunities presented by Trump outweigh whatever social opprobrium might follow an embrace.There’s a word for this type of cozy arrangement: oligarchy. The term conjures the corrupt illiberal system that governs Vladimir Putin’s Russia. But like fascism or democracy, the concept varies from country to country, a product of its native political culture and sources of wealth.The Trumpist oligarchy that is taking shape is far different from the post-Soviet strain. What makes it distinct is that Trump is entering into a partnership with the most powerful technologists in the world. But the core problem of oligarchy is the same. The symbiotic relationship between a corrupt leader and a business elite always entails the trading of favors. The regime does the bidding of the billionaires and, in turn, the billionaires do the bidding of the regime. Power grows ever more concentrated as the owners and the corrupt leaders conspire to protect their mutual hold on it. In short order, this arrangement has the potential to deliver a double blow to the American system: It could undermine capitalism and erode democracy all at once.Perhaps it will soon be possible to look back on the first Trump term with nostalgia. Back in those days, there was rampant corruption, but it was relatively small-time. Jared Kushner and the Trump kids traded on the family name. In the mix were old friends of the president like Tom Barrack, who allegedly attempted to parlay his presidential friendship to win clients in the Middle East. Supplicants usually ingratiated themselves with Trump by buying units in his buildings and hosting events at his resorts. When the Air-Conditioning, Heating, and Refrigeration Institute wanted the administration’s help, it spent more than $700,000 on an event at a Trump golf resort. In a second term, that brand of blatant transactionalism will reappear, and likely get much worse, because it’s now clear that there are no consequences for engaging in it.[Read: What Elon Musk really wants]The biggest difference between Trump I and Trump II is that he would return to office at a uniquely perilous moment in the history of American government. Never before has the state been such a lucrative profit center for private business. And not since the Gilded Age has it been so vulnerable to corrupt manipulation.In part, this is because of a bipartisan shift in ideology. Over the past decade, both political parties have come to embrace what’s called “industrial policy.” That is, to varying degrees, Republicans and Democrats agree that the government should play the role of investment bank, spending billions to subsidize sectors of the economy vital to the national interest—and to protect those domestic firms from foreign competition with tariffs.At the same time, the federal government has become a massive consumer of technology, in the form of cloud computing and artificial intelligence and rockets, that it can’t efficiently produce itself. From 2019 to 2022, according to a study by Brown University’s Watson Institute for International and Public Affairs, the Pentagon and intelligence community spent at least $53 billion on contracts with Big Technology firms.All that government spending comes at a time when the bureaucracy that oversees such expenditures is especially precarious. Over the summer, the Supreme Court issued a decision gutting the power of federal agencies. Trump would likely strike another grievous blow against it, extending his power to fire civil servants to purge a tier of experts, lawyers, and clerks hired to be neutral arbiters of the national interest so that he can replace them with his cronies.Without that accountability, the vast sums the government spends can be more easily funneled to favorite firms; regulation can be more easily manipulated to punish rivals of those firms. Those billionaires with access to the government will have something close to unchallenged control of the economy’s commanding heights.None of this would exactly resemble Putin’s oligarchy, which largely consists of old chums from the KGB and his childhood friends from St. Petersburg. Russia is an aristocracy of apparatchiks, whose primary goal is to protect ill-gotten wealth amassed during the country’s chaotic transition from communism, a mission that has required brutality and suppression.But Trump’s and Putin’s oligarchs share one important similarity. The Big Tech billionaires attracted to Trump would hope to protect their monopolies by providing essential services that make them indispensable to the government and the nation. This indispensability will also—so the theory goes—insulate them from antitrust enforcement. It’s far harder to make the case for breaking up a monopoly when that monopoly supplies the Pentagon with communications technologies and runs cloud-computing services for intelligence agencies.[Read: Jeff Bezos is blaming the victim]But there’s a distinct twist to the aims of the Big Tech oligarchs: They don’t simply want to insulate themselves from regulators and courts. Ultimately, they want to exploit their relationship with the government in order to supplant it. They want to be the ones who gain control of programs and systems that were once the purview of the state. Their alliance with Trump is, at bottom, a power grab.Take space exploration. Musk and Bezos don’t just want the government to subsidize their rockets and supply the funds that will further grow their aerospace firms. They want to become the architects of human life in the heavens, to design celestial colonies, to shape the future of space. Then there are the tech billionaires promoting cryptocurrency. They don’t simply want to remove regulatory restraints on the industry. In their vision, their companies will replace the U.S. Treasury. And some of these businesses hope to fend off the regulation of artificial intelligence, so that they can exert more invisible control over the flow of information and commerce.The central activity of an oligarchical system is the mutual scratching of backs. The head of state helps spread the lucre, but also collects a fee for his services. In Russia and Ukraine, presidents received actual monetary fees in the form of kickbacks. Oligarchs laundered money on their behalf, shifting cash into offshore accounts and buying them ornate villas. In essence, oligarchs serve as errand boys. If they own media, then they use their outlets to subtly make the case for their patron; they hire editors more inclined to spout the party line and to steer coverage in a preferred direction.It’s hard to imagine transplanting Russian oligarchy to these shores, given the American rule of law and the higher standards of American capitalism. But it’s possible to glimpse how the CEOs have begun to play the game—the way Musk has used X to relentlessly extol Trump, or how Bezos canceled The Washington Post’s endorsement of Harris and hired an alumnus of Rupert Murdoch’s empire to serve as publisher.Every oligarchical system writes its own informal rules, arriving at its own set of furtive understandings. In contrast to Putin, Trump is aligning with genuinely creative entrepreneurs. Yet that doesn’t make the American model better—just uniquely dangerous. Trump’s transactionalism will be tethered to people driven by greed, but also by messianic fervor, and the result will be like nothing you’ve ever seen.

National security requires the top independent, top flight Presidential advisors that Donald Trump has shown he will not abide.

Mario Cantone — who has played Anthony Marentino in the "Sex and the City" franchise for 24 years — is grateful to have a steady job late in his career.

When churches burn across Canada, do they make a sound? The answer, sadly, seems to be no.

A shark bit a 61-year-old surfer in the waters near Waiehu Beach Park in Hawaii on Friday morning and severed his leg, Maui County officials said.

Iran's regime warned of its capacity to build a nuclear weapon and threatened to change its policies on using one this weekend.

The wife of a U.S. pastor killed on a missionary trip with his family has been arrested. A close friend of the victim says the pastor “genuinely cared about those less privileged."

Use the Underdog Fantasy promo code NYPNEWS for up to $1,000 in bonus cash from a 50% deposit match offer ahead of Saturday's slate.

Immigration is ranked as one of the top issues for voters in the 2024 presidential election. Since spring 2022, New York City has taken in more than 200,000 asylum seekers, primarily families with children. For those kids, the journey can be arduous. One Brooklyn teen came up with a plan to ease their journey with a ball and a field.

"Just looking down any street, or any corner, there’s going to be piles of trash, and they’re going to stay there for days, because it seems like trashmen aren’t picking it up for whatever reason,” said a Flatbush native.

“What’s discipline got to do with winning?”

“When I saw John, I thought, why not be a positive role model to this kid as he’s growing up?” said Craig Hodges, a garbage truck driver.

So far, 205 bodies have been recovered after the floods in Spain. Volunteers are helping clean up thick mud that is covering streets and businesses.

It's not just the presidency that will be decided on Election Day. Voters will also decide which party controls the Senate. Right now, Democrats hold a one-seat edge, but the party is defending 23 seats. The seat most at-risk is that of Montana Democrat Jon Tester, who is facing a stiff challenge from Republican Tim Sheehy. Here's what to know about the race.

Vice President Kamala Harris and former President Donald Trump are both campaigning in battleground states as the 2024 presidential election approaches. Both will head south today, with Harris holding events in Georgia and North Carolina and Trump holding events in Virginia and North Carolina.

CBS News senior White House correspondent Ed O'Keefe and CBS News Congressional correspondent Scott MacFarlane have covered some of the biggest stories of this election cycle. Now, with just three days before Election Day, both give their opinions on the state of the race.

Rescue operations are continuing in Spain after flash flooding killed over 200 people. Meanwhile, the 2024 race for the presidential election is coming to a close. All that and all that matters in today's Eye Opener.

At 37, Lise Davidsen is among the most in-demand sopranos in the world, and she’s only just stepping into the roles that will define her career.

Forty-seven states and the District of Columbia allow voters to track the status of their ballot. Find out how to check yours.

Vengeance is a remarkable movie—funny as hell, thrilling, moving, ridiculously intelligent,  and one of my favorites of this new century—one-hundred percent. The post Nolte: Bridging the Red/Blue Divide with ‘Vengeance’ (2022) appeared first on Breitbart.

Tanner McGrath is taking host SMU over Pitt and favored Minnesota over host Illinois in Saturday's college football action.

It's the second game in this year's Commander-in-Chief's Trophy series.

Stars are shifting direction and allegiances, moving left and right, adding yet more unexpected twists to an already unprecedented presidential race.

As New York City's longest-serving tour guide, Joyce Gold has become a local celebrity -- more widely recognized than the stars in the Big Apple.

Any further attacks from either side could engulf the wider Middle East, already teetering over the Israel-Hamas war in the Gaza Strip and Israel's ground invasion of Lebanon, into a wider regional conflict.

Lemm now avoids the Big Apple because of criminal justice reforms.

The college football world will be treated to a fascinating matchup on Saturday, as No. 3 Penn State hosts No. 4 Ohio State in a Big Ten battle with epic implications. 

Enrollment in Affordable Care Act health plans has grown every year of the Biden administration, leading to record low numbers of people who are uninsured.

The iconic soap opera will stream exclusively on the platform for its third consecutive season.

Starbucks announced this week that starting November 7, its US and Canada stores will drop extra charges for plant-based milks — including oat, soy, almond, and coconut — that add 70 to 80 cents to a drink’s cost. It’s a change that plant-based food advocates have long campaigned for, citing the dairy industry’s grave animal welfare and climate impacts. In 2022, Succession actor James Cromwell — in partnership with PETA — superglued himself to a Starbucks counter in New York City in protest of the upcharge. The news comes as the coffee giant tries to win customers back after a marked drop in sales over the last year. Some customers are leaving due to inflation, “balking at $8 lattes, while others are boycotting the chain for a variety of reasons,” according to the New York Times (including the war in Gaza and union busting, though it’s unclear how much impact that’s had on Starbucks’s business). The plant milk fee hasn’t helped. In the US, around one quarter of Starbucks’ drinks that include milk are ordered with plant-based milk, according to data from 2021, and the upcharge adds much more to the cost of a drink for the customer than the actual cost of the plant-based milk to Starbucks.  According to Switch4Good, a nonprofit that advocates for shifting away from dairy and has long agitated against the plant milk surcharge, it costs Starbucks between 9 and 28 cents extra to make a drink with soy, almond, or oat milk. That means the extra 70- to 80-cent charge could amount to a markup of more than 700 percent, depending on the milk alternative. A Starbucks spokesperson told Vox that the decision to drop the surcharge was made to benefit customers but didn’t answer questions about Switch4Good’s analysis. The company has also been sued for the upcharge on discrimination grounds because around one-third of Americans — disproportionately people of color — have difficulty digesting lactose, a sugar found in milk.  While changing course on the plant milk upcharge was, above all, a business decision, it could also be a milestone in the food industry’s stalled efforts to combat climate change, given milk’s big carbon footprint. The switch will also help to further mainstream dairy-free milk, a more humane and sustainable alternative to conventional dairy, during what has otherwise been a turbulent year for the plant-based food market.  Starbucks’s new policy is a big deal for the climate  Producing cow’s milk has outsize social and environmental costs compared to plant-based milks — costs that aren’t priced into what consumers pay for dairy, which benefits from a range of government subsidies designed to make animal products cheap and plentiful.  For one, there’s the animal cruelty. The dairy business model depends on artificially inseminating cows and separating them from their calves at birth so humans can take their milk. The calves are typically forced to live alone in small enclosures while dairy cows are kept in large, industrial sheds, spending little to no time in pasture. After multiple cycles of pregnancy and birth, when a dairy cow’s milk productivity wanes, she’s typically sent to slaughter.  More important to Starbucks, however, is milk’s greenhouse gas emissions, which comprise more than one-fifth of the company’s global carbon footprint. Dairy production devours dramatically more land and water, and contributes far more greenhouse gas emissions and water pollution, than plant-based alternatives. Climate scientists agree that reducing dairy and meat consumption in wealthy countries is a necessary part of climate mitigation. Starbucks has committed to halving its greenhouse gas emissions by 2030, and expanding its plant-based menu options is a key component of that goal. Removing the plant milk upcharge, a Starbucks spokesperson said in a statement, also contributes to the company’s sustainability plans.  As of 2023, the coffee chain had made minimal progress toward reducing its carbon footprint; its overall emissions had increased from its 2019 baseline, in part because its emissions from cow’s milk were up 8 percent over that period. Starbucks is such a large buyer of milk that dairy emissions across its global operations is equivalent to around 2 percent of emissions from all US dairy production. Food companies are struggling to cut their emissions because most of their menus revolve around meat and dairy, the most carbon-intensive foods. Starbucks’s decision to drop its dairy-free surcharge should help. Substituting nondairy milks is already Starbucks’s second most requested drink customization, according to the company, so the change could push even more of its customers to go dairy-free. It could also push other chains to follow.  What the Starbucks change could mean for the future of plant-based dairy The move represents a rare win in recent years for the US plant-based food industry. After a meteoric rise in the late 2010s — as Beyond Meat and Impossible burgers went mainstream and Oatly became the it-milk of baristas and consumers alike — the sector has since faltered. A number of fast food chains have dropped plant-based burgers from their menus, while the incumbent livestock sector has attacked plant-based startups. Shoppers have opted for cheaper animal products amid high inflation.  Plant-based milk, though, has managed to weather the plant-based backlash better than most; from 2021 to 2023, revenues were up 9 percent, accounting for almost 15 percent of total milk sales (though the number of nondairy milk units fell). Meanwhile, plant-based meat sales fell by an estimated 13 percent during that same period.  Given Starbucks’s size and influence, dairy-free milk’s market share may continue to grow — and cow’s milk sales, which have been dropping for decades, may decline further. Starbucks’s policy change, however, is more than just a sign of plant-based milk’s staying power; it also demonstrates the potential for the plant-based and anti-factory farming movements to apply sustained pressure to corporations and get results.  PETA and Switch4Good have called on the company to drop the surcharge for years. While Starbucks says the change was a business decision, the protests, celebrity endorsements, and petitions likely helped, creating the very idea that charging more for plant-based options was unjust. And while the protests have at times been ridiculed as the work of whiny vegans angry about a 70-cent charge, the successful campaign will now primarily benefit Starbucks’s millions of nonvegan customers who just enjoy plant-based milks or require them due to lactose intolerance (and, of course, factory-farmed cows and the climate).     “The move follows a vigorous five-year campaign, letters from more than 160,000 PETA supporters, protests at Starbucks around the country, and help from actor James Cromwell… as well as an appeal from Sir Paul McCartney,” a PETA statement reads. PETA paused its campaign in September to give the new Starbucks CEO, Brian Niccol, time to “make the right decision,” the organization said. “And he delivered.”  If Starbucks wanted to, it could go even further by making plant-based milk the default option for its milky drinks. In 2022, Blue Bottle, a Nestlé-owned upscale coffee chain with some 100 locations around the world, announced it was making oat milk the default milk in beverage orders in US locations as part of a larger effort to cut carbon emissions. Now, if a Blue Bottle customer wants cow’s milk, they have to request it, but most don’t; a few months after making the switch, Blue Bottle reported that 63 percent of customers were sticking with oat milk.Blue Bottle’s approach, which other food companies have also embraced, shows how heavily our food choices are influenced by our food environments. Small changes — from dropping surcharges to changing default options — can nudge us toward a more climate-friendly future. Starbucks is the latest, and largest, company to put conventional dairy and plant-based milk on a level playing field. Others should follow.