More than 600 miles separated the epicenter of Friday’s earthquake in Myanmar from the skyscrapers of Bangkok, which lurched and swayed on the skyline of the vast metropolis. A 33-story high-rise under construction even collapsed. How could the shaking in Bangkok, the Thai capital, be connected to an earthquake so far away? The answer involves … Read more
When lightning strikes a tree in the tropics, the whole forest explodes. “At their most extreme, it kind of looks like a bomb went off,” said Evan Gora, a forest ecologist at the Cary Institute of Ecosystem Studies in Millbrook, N.Y. Dozens of trees around the one that was struck are electrocuted. Within months, a … Read more
A fan got kicked out of a baseball stadium last week because the message on his hat appeared to violate a rule against displaying political slogans. The offending political message? The seemingly anodyne “Canada is not for sale.” Oh, yes, this happened in Canada. On Thursday afternoon, Dan Begley, a retired financial adviser, attended the … Read more
Secretary of State Marco Rubio has ordered diplomats overseas to scrutinize the social media content of some applicants for student and other types of visas, in an effort to ban those suspected of criticizing the United States and Israel from entering the country, U.S. officials say. Mr. Rubio laid out the instructions in a long … Read more
Lawyers for Venezuelan migrants accused of being members of a violent street gang asked the Supreme Court on Tuesday to continue a temporary block on President Trump’s use of a wartime powers law to send hundreds of people to a prison in El Salvador. The Trump administration has asked the justices to intervene and lift … Read more
Even in a frequently fogbound port city along the Atlantic Ocean, the billowing clouds of steam rising from Canada’s largest oil refinery over Saint John, New Brunswick, are impossible to miss. On a ridge overlooking the refinery sit six enormous tanks, each containing one million barrels of crude oil. Letters painted in dark blue spell … Read more
Five senators who visited the U.S. base at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, criticized the migrant mission there over the weekend as a waste of resources, after the Pentagon estimated that the operation had cost $40 million in its first month. The Senate delegation on Friday toured Immigration and Customs Enforcement facilities where about 85 migrants were … Read more
In the early 1900s, Franz Boas, who is considered one of the founders of American anthropology, became fascinated by a large shrine associated with Indigenous whaling rituals off the coast of British Columbia. He had been sent a photograph of the shrine, which belonged to members of an Indigenous group called the Mowachaht. It showed … Read more
About 300,000 electricity customers in Michigan, Wisconsin and Ontario, Canada’s most populous province, were without power early Sunday as a spring storm brought freezing rain and sleet to the Great Lakes region. Ice from the storm covered tree branches, snapping some power lines on Saturday, and created hazardous driving conditions. A National Weather Service office … Read more
On Wednesday, Prime Minister Mark Carney’s election campaign had brought him to the bridge between Windsor, Ontario, and Detroit, over which $300 million worth of auto parts cross daily. He unveiled a series of promises of programs for workers and auto-related industries that would be rolled out if President Trump imposed tariffs on products from … Read more