Robert Thurman, whose erudite, exuberant efforts to expand the West’s understanding of Tibetan Buddhism earned him a reputation as “the Dalai Lama’s man in America,” died on Tuesday at his home in Woodstock, N.Y. He was 84. His daughter, the actress Uma Thurman, confirmed the death. Widely considered the foremost expert on Tibetan Buddhism in…
Prime Minister Sanae Takaichi, who came to power in October 2025, has also pushed for revising Article 9 of Japan’s constitution, which renounces war as a sovereign right of the nation and the threat or use of force as means of settling international disputes. It also states that land, sea, and air forces, as well…
Georgia on Wednesday will become the latest Southern state to seize upon the recent Supreme Court decision on voting rights to consider redrawing its congressional lines to favor the Republican Party. Gov. Brian Kemp has summoned lawmakers to the Capitol in Atlanta for a special session, aiming to lock in new federal and state legislative…
Chris Murphy, the Democratic senator from Connecticut, offered the graduates of Wesleyan University wise counsel in his commencement speech a few weeks back. “You are about to step out into a world that prizes efficiency and the annihilation of drift and friction above all else,” he said. “Our entire economy is built on rewarding companies…
The resignations from the heart of government this week will only deepen the anti-Westminster mood ahead of the Makerfield byelection. The departure of the defence secretary, John Healey, and his deputy illustrates that Sir Keir Starmer’s problem is not just his unpopularity. It is that his claim to competence is being challenged from the inside….
A teenager from California has won the 2026 Scripps National Spelling Bee, following three days of competition at Washington’s Constitution Hall. Shrey Parikh went head to head with Ishaan Gupta, a 12-year-old, in the final round. The pair had to spell as many words as they could in 90 seconds. Shrey correctly spelled 32 words…
In the late 19th century, after Reconstruction, US federal protections for Black voters began to erode. Southern states sought to reshape their electoral systems – through poll taxes, literacy tests and districting – to consolidate political control for white supremacist politicians. Over decades this led to Jim Crow laws, under which most Black Americans in the…
“These actions could be taken broadly at the outset, before courts rule on their legality, preceding any form of judicial review,” Winer said. In other words, time would be on Trump’s side, with the likelihood that Congress and the courts would be slow to react, and both might well passively accede to Trump’s effective cancellation…
The Supreme Court on Monday restored nationwide access to a widely used abortion medication in a temporary order that will, for now, allow women to once again obtain the pill mifepristone by mail. In a brief order, Justice Samuel A. Alito Jr. paused a lower-court ruling from Friday that had prevented abortion providers from prescribing…
A federal appeals court issued a ruling on Friday temporarily halting the ability of abortion providers to prescribe pills using telemedicine and send them to patients by mail, blocking what has become a major avenue for women seeking abortions in recent years. The order comes in a case in which the state of Louisiana is…
