For more than a dozen years, Minnesota has put public money into a promise: that if we ask farmers politely and offer them a modest financial incentive, they’ll strengthen conservation efforts to better protect Minnesota’s lakes and rivers from agricultural pollution.

So far, the state has spent $32 million on that promise through the ...Read more

Those of us of a certain age remember the grainy security videos on Sept. 11, 2001, when bored and inattentive private screeners let murderers and hijackers through checkpoints. That led Congress to create the federal Transportation Security Administration with widespread support from Americans who never wanted to see that happen again.

But ...Read more

SAN FRANCISCO — Every election produces a campaign strategist whose victory bestows upon them, for at least a little while, the unofficial title of reigning political genius.

James Carville, Karl Rove, David Axelrod and Stephen K. Bannon have all worn the crown.

For many years, and many election cycles, California's reigning political ...Read more

It seemed like Julie Felss Masino had saved her job as chief executive officer of Cracker Barrel Old Country Store Inc.

After a logo change ensnared the restaurant chain in the culture wars, Masino had the company back on track. The stock has more than doubled year-to-date, making Cracker Barrel the S&P Composite 1500 Restaurants Index’s ...Read more

Since the Supreme Court struck down its “Liberation Day” tariffs earlier this year, the White House has been turning to other ways of getting trade policy all wrong.

Its first idea was a 150-day tariff of 10% applied to almost all imports. When that measure expired last week, officials were ready with yet another scheme. This one may prove...Read more

A few days ago, the Trump administration issued a 123-page report heralding a "new golden age" for U.S. science.

The key, said the report, published in the name of Michael Kratsios, director of the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy, was to ensure that the approval of federal research grants "rests purely on merit, not the ...Read more

For the few enthusiasts of the revolution, July 26 meant celebrating once more the attack on the Moncada Barracks in 1953 to try to overthrow Fulgencio Batista’s dictatorship. The assault failed, but it catapulted Fidel Castro into being the leader of the 26th of July Movement and the Cuban Revolution. On Jan. 1, 1959, Batista fled the island ...Read more

SACRAMENTO, Calif. — Last week, news broke that an artificial intelligence thingamajig broke free from the constraints of its maker, OpenAI, and committed what could be considered a string of white-collar felonies if it were human.

Because the AI thingamajig is in fact not human, the incident raised a big kerfuffle but is largely being ...Read more

In June, Elon University launched its first AI Play camp. In one activity, teams of middle school students played Tic-Tac-Toe, not as a child might, but rather, like a machine.

Tasked with writing and then following a set of fixed instructions, the students play the game as an AI agent would. That experience of following instructions and ...Read more

Pennsylvanians were well acquainted with John Fetterman’s idiosyncrasies by the time he was elected to the U.S. Senate four years ago. No one had a right, for example, to expect him to report for Capitol Hill duty with a clean shave and a pressed suit.

His supporters do deserve to be dismayed, however, at their increasingly right-leaning ...Read more

Along with ongoing coverage of the latest bombings and missile and drone attacks in Iran and the oil-rich Gulf states, extreme weather events are also providing lead segments on evening news programs this summer. What you don’t see in much of the TV coverage, at least not since the beginning of President Donald Trump’s second term as ...Read more

Nick Holonyak Jr. invented the world’s first practical visible-light LED in Syracuse, New York, in 1962. The son of an Illinois coal miner, he earned three degrees at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign and returned there as a professor. His invention now lights the world, and it created a global market worth more than $100 billion. ...Read more

When most people think of dictatorships or autocracies, they usually point to countries like North Korea, Iran, Russia and China. Yet there is a nation just as repressive as those on this list, and it just so happens to reside in America’s own hemisphere.

Nicaragua, whose politics have been upended by former Sandinista fighter-turned-...Read more

Last week, Tom Ellsworth was in Grand Marais, Minn., standing on the shores of Lake Superior. Thick with smoke, the air was acrid, and Ellsworth and his wife, Nancy, who live in the Twin Cities, had trouble breathing. Canceling their vacation at a Gunflint Trail Resort was a no-brainer.

“Our grandchildren were with us and we just made the ...Read more

Cosmo and Hook came into my life in the summer of 2020. My wife, Delilah, found them on the website of Frosted Faces Foundation, a nonprofit in the northern San Diego County town of Ramona that rescues senior dogs.

She immediately wanted the furry Yorkie and the skinny Chihuahua; I didn't.

Adopting pets in the winter of their lives seemed like...Read more

Eighty years ago, though the Arsenal of Democracy had vanquished the Axis and weathered a withering Depression, the recovering American people found themselves rich in bills but short on laughs. Enter Dean Martin and Jerry Lewis, who debuted together on July 25, 1946.

Unlike Laurel and Hardy, Abbott and Costello, or Hope and Crosby, who relied ...Read more

LOS ANGELES -- Olga Rudneva, lanky and elegant in a dark pantsuit, sat in the comfort of a plush alcove at Casa del Mar, the luxury Santa Monica hotel, incongruously showing me photographs of wounded and maimed Ukrainians.

Some are soldiers, some civilians. A man's face is crisscrossed with black lines from gunpowder. Another is missing his ...Read more

If Nevada controlled more of the land within its own boundaries, state and local officials would have more input over how that land was used.

The Bureau of Land Management recently announced that it had approved the Townsite Data Center project near Boulder City. The news came as a surprise to Boulder City residents. Many had been fighting ...Read more