The Climate Election: Immigration, explained

Kathleen Hennings marked her milestone birthday with a pint of her favorite drink.

"Gonna hop off social media for a while and attempt to heal privately," the Barstool Sports personality posted on her Instagram Story Tuesday.

Voter registration data in Pennsylvania shows Democrats' edge over registered Republicans has fallen compared to 2020 in the key battleground state.

Viral online content spreading baseless attacks on Democratic vice presidential nominee Tim Walz was created by Russia, senior U.S. intelligence official says.

Most parents at James Madison High School said three teens accused of sex assault while hazing a student should be disciplined -- but it should have been handled in-house.

The "Wild 'N Out" host insisted that he never saw anything illegal at the parties and believes the case has become "sensationalized."

The Jets’ season is spiraling with a 2-5 record, and Aaron Rodgers senses that the pressure to turn things around is sucking some of the fun out of his team.

Add Deebo Samuel to the list as the decimation of San Francisco’s locker room continues. 

The other threat to our lives that the war keeps compounding.

How to be the hostest with the mostest (without spending the mostest)

There are two Michael Jordans, both widely regarded as the Greatest of All Time. One is an NBA legend. The other is a pumpkin. In 2023, the eponymous 2,749-pound goliath set the world record for heaviest pumpkin. Michael Jordan weighed as much as a small car and was even more massive—so broad that it would just barely fit in a parking space. Like all giant pumpkins, its flesh was warped by all that mass—sort of like Jabba the Hutt with a spray tan.It is hard to imagine how a pumpkin could get any bigger. But you might have said the same thing about the previous world-record holder, a 2,702-pound beast grown in Italy in 2021, or the world-record holder before that, a Belgian 2,624-pounder in 2016. Each year around this time, giant pumpkins across the globe are forklifted into pickup trucks and transported to competitions where they break new records.Michael Jordan set the record at California’s Half Moon Bay Safeway World Championship Pumpkin Weigh-Off, considered the Super Bowl of North American pumpkin-growing. The first winner of the competition, in 1974, weighed just 132 pounds. In 2004, the winner clocked in at 1,446 pounds. “At that time, we thought, Gee whiz, can we push these things any farther?” Wizzy Grande, the president of the Great Pumpkin Commonwealth, an organization that establishes global standards for competition, told me. Yet in just another decade, the record passed the 2,000-pound mark. “We’ve zoomed past that now,” Travis Gienger, the grower from Minnesota who cultivated Michael Jordan, told me. For champion growers, there’s only one thing to do next: try to break 3,000. Last year, Michael Jordan weighed in at a world-record 2,749 pounds. (Alex Washburn / AP) Giant pumpkins aren’t quite supersize versions of what you find in the grocery store. All competitive pumpkins are Curcubita maxima, the largest species of squash—which, in the wild, can grow to 200 pounds, about 10 times heavier than the common Halloween pumpkin. But decades of selective breeding—crossing only the largest plants—has created colossal varieties.Virtually all of today’s champions trace their lineage to Dill’s Atlantic Giant, a variety bred in the 1970s by a Canadian grower named Howard Dill. Very competitive growers source their seeds from one another, through seed exchanges and auctions, where a single seed can be sold for thousands of dollars, Michael Estadt, an assistant professor at Ohio State University Extension who has cultivated giant pumpkins, told me. Seeds from Gienger’s champions are in high demand, yet even he is constantly aiming to improve the genetics of his line. “I’m looking for heavy,” he said.Yet even a pumpkin with a prize-winning pedigree won’t reach its full size unless it’s managed well. Like babies, they require immense upkeep, even before they are born. Months before planting, at least 1,000 square feet of soil per pumpkin must be fertilized and weeded. Once seedlings are planted, they have to be watered daily for their entire growing period, roughly four months. No mere garden hose can do the trick; each plant needs at least one inch of water a week, which allows the pumpkin to gain up to 70 pounds in a single day. The fruit and leaves must also be inspected at least once daily for pests and disease—no small feat as their surface area balloons. Quickly spotting and excising the eggs of an insect called the squash-vine borer, then bandaging the wounded vine, is paramount. One day, you might have a great pumpkin, “then boom, the next day, all of the vine is completely dead,” says Julie Weisenhorn, a horticulture educator at the University of Minnesota who has grown giant pumpkins—named Seymour (744 pounds) and Audrey (592 pounds).Growers can keep pushing the pumpkin weight limit by ensuring that a plant doesn’t pollinate with a plant that has subpar genes. To do so, they hand-pollinate, painstakingly dusting pollen from a plant’s male flowers into the female ones. This usually leads the plant to bear three or four fruit, but only the most promising is allowed to survive. The rest are killed off in an attempt to direct all of the plant’s resources toward a single giant. In the same vein, wayward vines are nipped, and emerging roots thrust deep into the ground, in hopes of harnessing every last nutrient for the potential champion.Still, some factors are beyond anyone’s control. The weather can literally make or break a pumpkin. Too much rain can cause a pumpkin to grow too quickly, cracking its flesh open, which would disqualify it from competition. Too much sunlight hardens the flesh, making it prone to fractures. It’s not uncommon for giant pumpkins to have custom-built personal sunshades. North America’s giant-pumpkin capitals—Half Moon Bay, Nova Scotia, and Minnesota—have nature on their side, with low humidity and nighttime temperatures. Cooler nights mean less respiration, which means less wasted energy.Yet nature bests even the world’s champions. This year, Gienger couldn’t break the record he set with Michael Jordan; he blames cold and wet weather, which made it harder to feed micronutrients to his pumpkin, Rudy. (At 2,471 pounds, it still won the Half Moon Bay competition.) And no matter how big a pumpkin grows, it needs to pack a few extra pounds for the road: Once they’re cut from the vine, they rapidly lose their weight in water. A pumpkin can lose roughly 10 pounds in a single day.All of the experts I spoke with believe that 3,000 pounds is within reach. “It’s still an upward trend,” said Grande, who noted that a 2,907-pounder has already been recorded, albeit a damaged one. Pumpkin genetics are continually improving; more 2,000-pounders have been grown in the past year than ever before, according to Grande. Growers are constantly developing new practices. Each year, the Great Pumpkin Conference holds an international summit for growers and scientists to trade techniques (last year’s was in Belgium, and this year’s will be in the Green Bay Packers’ Lambeau Field). Shifting goals have precipitated new (and expensive) methods: Carbon dioxide and gibberellic acid are being used as growth stimulants; some pumpkins are fully grown in greenhouses.The reason that giant-pumpkin weights increased 20-fold in half a century is the same reason that runners keep running faster marathons, that skyscrapers keep clawing at the sky, and that people spend so much on anti-aging. To push nature’s limits is a reliably exhilarating endeavor; to be the one to succeed is a point of pride. Food companies, in particular, build their entire businesses on developing the biggest and best. Wild strawberries are the size of a nickel, but domesticated ones are as huge as Ping-Pong balls. Industrial breeding turned the scrawny, two-and-a-half-pound chickens of the 1920s into today’s six-pounders. There’s still room for them to grow: Strawberries can grow as big as a saucer, and the heaviest chicken on record was a 22-pounder named Weirdo. But foods sold commercially are subject to other constraints on growth, such as transportation, storage, processing, and customer preference. Unusually big foods are associated with less flavor, and their size can be off-putting. When it comes to food, there is such a thing as too big.Giant pumpkins, by contrast, have a singular purpose: to become as heavy as possible. They don’t have to be beautiful, taste good, or withstand transport, because they are not food. When companies develop boundary-pushing crops and animals, that tends to be an isolationist enterprise, shrouded in secrecy. But in the giant-pumpkin community, there is less incentive to guard seeds and techniques. Most competitions are low-stakes local affairs, and nobody ever became rich off giant pumpkins, not even Howard Dill.Breaking records is largely seen as a communal effort. “The secret to our success is that we are a sharing community,” Grande said. In a few contests, the investment is worth it—the Half Moon Bay prize for world-record-breakers is $30,000—but “it’s not a get-rich-quick scheme,” Estadt told me. People do it, he said, “for the thrill of the win.”All of the pumpkin experts I spoke with acknowledged that there must be a limit. But nobody has any idea what it is. Four thousand pounds, 5,000—as far as growers can tell, these are as feasible as any other goal. Every milestone they reach marks another human achievement, another triumph over nature. But even the most majestic of pumpkins inevitably meets the same fate: devoured by livestock, and returned to the earth.

Democratic vice presidential candidate Tim Walz addressed concerns about major labor unions backing away from endorsing the Harris-Walz ticket this election cycle.

Deputy State Department spokesperson Vedant Patel briefed reporters as the FBI confirmed it is investigating a classified document leak related to Israel's plans to respond to Iran's missile attack. Patel also commented on Israel's ongoing conflict in Lebanon against the Hezbollah militant group.

No pain, no gain isn't just a saying.

While many factors, such as age and family history, are beyond our control, we can lower our cancer risk with a healthy diet.

Giulia Manfrini, 36, was surfing in the waters of Masokut Island when a swordfish struck her in the chest, leading to her drowning. officials said.

A veteran law enforcement official turned his daughter in for murder and spoke out at her sentencing about her owning up to the truth and accepting responsibility. "Whatever is sentenced to you, that is fine."

The “Big Four” accounting firm claimed the employees had cheated, while staffers said the incident was just a result of the task-heavy work culture encouraged by the firm. 

Shalom loves to help golden retriever Skylar get ready for her daily walk.

This marks the first time that five former MVP winners will play in the same World Series

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The poll of 2,000 Americans found that the average person ingests 99 grams of sugar per day, which is more sugar than what’s in two twelve-ounce cans of soda. Over the span of a year, that totals to nearly 80 Ibs of sugar.

A Glen Powell–themed Halloween party is a fate worse than death.

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Get ready for 16 games in one night.

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Try it!

"I failed people that love me and mostly myself," Zach Bryan said about the breakup.

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President Biden will speak in Concord, NH about lowering the cost of prescription drugs. The live event is scheduled to begin at 3:45 PM EST. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GDcas0THHOU

Minnesota Governor Tim Walz and former president Barack Obama stop in Madison, Wisconsin to hold a rally. The live event is slated to begin at 3:00 PM EST. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PLXieB51mEc

He knows the risks of his return to play. But how he talks about it matters.

Orange County Supervisor Andrew Do has agreed to resign and plead guilty to accepting more than $550,000 in bribes to direct millions of dollars in COVID-relief funds to a non-profit connected to his daughter, federal prosecutors announced Tuesday.

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The actress talks about her decision to go bare on "The Drew Barrymore Show," enlisting the host and Valerie Bertinelli to go fresh-faced as well.

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Hezbollah got shockingly close in its attempt to kill Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, with their explosive drone cracking his bedroom window, according to a chilling image of the aftermath.

Five people, including three teenagers, are dead after a Monday morning shooting in a home in Fall City, Wash. A 15-year-old male was taken into custody.

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