Two years into his prison term for a 2020 murder, Ivan Rossomakhin was recruited into a Russian private military company (PMC) in exchange for freedom. He returned home from Ukraine in 2023 and, within days, killed an 85-year-old woman in a nearby town. One...

The plant Cannabis sativa is an herbaceous flowering annual that was originally native to central and eastern Asia. It has been cultivated throughout recorded history as a source of fiber for fabric and rope, seed oil, animal feed, and medicine. Evidence exists that some ancient...

Since returning to office in January 2025, Donald Trump has aggressively pursued a radical reshaping of U.S. foreign policy. In early March, the State Department terminated foreign assistance programs supporting political opposition and regime change in Cuba, Nicaragua, and Venezuela, deeming them no longer...

Until now, at least 14 different species have been assigned to the genus Homo since it emerged in Ethiopia some 2.8 million years ago revealing branching evolutionary stories of survival, intermixing, and extinctions. Archaeology is increasingly allowing us to glimpse into one of...

Rigid thinking has been linked to social and professional problems, difficulty in adapting to societal change, and mental health issues that can lead to suicide and mass shootings. ...

Amid ongoing discussions over Donald Trump’s plans for trying to resolve conflicts in Ukraine and Israel, the U.S. president has maintained steady pressure on NATO allies for months. After his 2024 election victory, Trump again raised the prospect of annexing the Danish territory of...

Over more than a thousand years, Venice transformed from a modest refuge into a dominant Mediterranean power. Despite various crises and encircling empires, the Venetian Republic avoided foreign rule, revolution, and collapse. ...

In July 2020, Iranian dissident Jamshid Sharmahd was visiting Dubai when he was suddenly abducted. Mobile phone data later traced his movements to Oman’s port city of Sohar, before the signal went silent. Days later, he reappeared in Iran, accused of leading a terrorist...

A quiet panic has broken out within immigrant communities across the United States ahead of Donald Trump’s inauguration on January 20, 2025. Mixed-status families are expecting to be separated, DACA recipients foresee their status being revoked, those with Temporary Protected Status are...

In thousands of ways, we are taught to accept the world we live in as the only possible one, but thousands of other ways of organizing homes, cities, schools, societies, economies, and cosmologies have existed and could exist. ...