On February 13, 2016, Justice Antonin Scalia died. Before his body was in the ground, Senate Majority Leader announced he would block anyone President Barack Obama nominated to fill Scalia’s seat. The next week, Jeb Bush dropped out of the Republican primary, quickly followed by Marco Rubio, and eventually Ted Cruz, leaving Donald Trump as the presumptive nominee. showed Hillary Clinton beating Trump by solid margins, with forecasters pegging her chances of victory from to percent, and Democrats to take back the Senate.I was working for Senate Democratic Leader Harry Reid at the time. Being...…On February 13, 2016, Justice Antonin Scalia died. Before his body was in the ground, Senate Majority Leader announced he would block anyone President Barack Obama nominated to fill Scalia’s seat. The next week, Jeb Bush dropped out of the Republican primary, quickly followed by Marco Rubio, and eventually Ted Cruz, leaving Donald Trump as the presumptive nominee. showed Hillary Clinton beating Trump by solid margins, with forecasters pegging her chances of victory from to percent, and Democrats to take back the Senate.I was working for Senate Democratic Leader Harry Reid at the time. Being...WW…

“A lie is a lie is a lie,” Whoopi Goldberg said. It was May 2nd, and she was on the set of “The View,” the daytime talk show that she co-hosts. The subject was Attorney General , who had argued that the special counsel ’s report was not as alarming as it seemed—endorsing ’s claim that there had been “no collusion, no obstruction” in the Russia case. Goldberg was incredulous. “Our parents taught us, if you lie, there are consequences,” she said. “When are consequences coming back?”Her guest, the attorney Alan Dershowitz, offered an answer that combined legal analysis and political...…“A lie is a lie is a lie,” Whoopi Goldberg said. It was May 2nd, and she was on the set of “The View,” the daytime talk show that she co-hosts. The subject was Attorney General , who had argued that the special counsel ’s report was not as alarming as it seemed—endorsing ’s claim that there had been “no collusion, no obstruction” in the Russia case. Goldberg was incredulous. “Our parents taught us, if you lie, there are consequences,” she said. “When are consequences coming back?”Her guest, the attorney Alan Dershowitz, offered an answer that combined legal analysis and political...WW…

ApplicationEnd UserSectorSource DataTechnology San Francisco face-recognition startup Everalbum won a $2 million contract with the Air Force to provide “AI-driven access control.” Monday, another arm of the US government dealt the company a setback.The Federal Trade Commission Everalbum had agreed to settle charges that it had applied face-recognition technology to images uploaded to a photo app without users’ permission and retained them after telling users they would be deleted. The startup used millions of the photos to develop technology offered to government agencies and other...…ApplicationEnd UserSectorSource DataTechnology San Francisco face-recognition startup Everalbum won a $2 million contract with the Air Force to provide “AI-driven access control.” Monday, another arm of the US government dealt the company a setback.The Federal Trade Commission Everalbum had agreed to settle charges that it had applied face-recognition technology to images uploaded to a photo app without users’ permission and retained them after telling users they would be deleted. The startup used millions of the photos to develop technology offered to government agencies and other...WW…

Last February, some of Iran’s most influential leaders gathered at the Amir al-Momenin Mosque, in northeast Tehran, inside a gated community reserved for officers of the Revolutionary Guard. They had come to pay their last respects to a fallen comrade. Hassan Shateri, a veteran of Iran’s covert wars throughout the Middle East and South Asia, was a senior commander in a powerful, élite branch of the Revolutionary Guard called the Quds Force. The force is the sharp instrument of Iranian foreign policy, roughly analogous to a combined C.I.A. and Special Forces; its name comes from the Persian...…Last February, some of Iran’s most influential leaders gathered at the Amir al-Momenin Mosque, in northeast Tehran, inside a gated community reserved for officers of the Revolutionary Guard. They had come to pay their last respects to a fallen comrade. Hassan Shateri, a veteran of Iran’s covert wars throughout the Middle East and South Asia, was a senior commander in a powerful, élite branch of the Revolutionary Guard called the Quds Force. The force is the sharp instrument of Iranian foreign policy, roughly analogous to a combined C.I.A. and Special Forces; its name comes from the Persian...WW…

effort to appease regulators, electronic-cigarette maker Juul said Thursday it would stop selling its creme-, fruit-, berry-, and mango-flavored pods in the US until the products have been by the US Food and Drug Administration. The company will, however, continue to sell its popular menthol-based flavors, including mint.Juul has faced a number of public setbacks in recent months. The company is being investigated by the , as well as the , federal in California, and state attorneys general for advertising that allegedly misled users and made unverified claims about its products’...…effort to appease regulators, electronic-cigarette maker Juul said Thursday it would stop selling its creme-, fruit-, berry-, and mango-flavored pods in the US until the products have been by the US Food and Drug Administration. The company will, however, continue to sell its popular menthol-based flavors, including mint.Juul has faced a number of public setbacks in recent months. The company is being investigated by the , as well as the , federal in California, and state attorneys general for advertising that allegedly misled users and made unverified claims about its products’...WW…

In 2017, Jimmy “Jimbo” Wales – the Wikipedia cofounder whose plaintive face used to haunt the free encyclopedia’s homepage during fundraising campaigns – decided to save journalism. As an avid consumer of news, The Guardian board member, and all-around internet wise man, he had noticed some alarming trends in the media industry: the advertising-based revenue model was starving online news outlets while pushing them towards clickbait sensationalism; bias and partisanship were rife, which made the general public increasingly distrustful of the media; alternative sources and outright “fake...…In 2017, Jimmy “Jimbo” Wales – the Wikipedia cofounder whose plaintive face used to haunt the free encyclopedia’s homepage during fundraising campaigns – decided to save journalism. As an avid consumer of news, The Guardian board member, and all-around internet wise man, he had noticed some alarming trends in the media industry: the advertising-based revenue model was starving online news outlets while pushing them towards clickbait sensationalism; bias and partisanship were rife, which made the general public increasingly distrustful of the media; alternative sources and outright “fake...WW…

Daniel MacArthur set out to build a massive library of human — the biggest ever. The 60,706 raw sequences, collected from colleagues all over the globe, took up a petabyte of memory. It was the kind of flashy, blockbuster project that would secure MacArthur a coveted spot in one of science’s top three journals, launching his new lab at the Broad Institute into the scientific spotlight. But before all that happened, he did something that counted as an act of radicalism in the world of biology: He put it on the internet.Posting scientific papers online before peer review—in so-called preprint...…Daniel MacArthur set out to build a massive library of human — the biggest ever. The 60,706 raw sequences, collected from colleagues all over the globe, took up a petabyte of memory. It was the kind of flashy, blockbuster project that would secure MacArthur a coveted spot in one of science’s top three journals, launching his new lab at the Broad Institute into the scientific spotlight. But before all that happened, he did something that counted as an act of radicalism in the world of biology: He put it on the internet.Posting scientific papers online before peer review—in so-called preprint...WW…

ApplicationCompanyEnd UserSectorTechnology Monday in January 2017, at 2:30 in the afternoon, about a thousand employees—horrified, alarmed, and a little giddy—began pouring out of the company's offices in Mountain View, California. They packed themselves into a cheerful courtyard outside the main campus café, a parklike area dotted with picnic tables and a shade structure that resembles a giant game of pickup sticks. Many of them held up handmade signs: “Proud Iranian-American Googler,” “Even Introverts Are Here,” and of course, “Don't Be Evil!” written in the same kindergarten colors as...…ApplicationCompanyEnd UserSectorTechnology Monday in January 2017, at 2:30 in the afternoon, about a thousand employees—horrified, alarmed, and a little giddy—began pouring out of the company's offices in Mountain View, California. They packed themselves into a cheerful courtyard outside the main campus café, a parklike area dotted with picnic tables and a shade structure that resembles a giant game of pickup sticks. Many of them held up handmade signs: “Proud Iranian-American Googler,” “Even Introverts Are Here,” and of course, “Don't Be Evil!” written in the same kindergarten colors as...WW…

as the workday was winding down, Paula Milano received a phone call that threw her week into chaos. Milano, who helps run the Space Sciences Laboratory at UC Berkeley, had been gearing up for a satellite launch. But on the phone now was a friend of hers, with bad news: PG&E, the power company, the school that its electricity could be cut Wednesday—making the campus one of more than 700,000 customers .The outage was to keep forecasted high winds from jostling electrical equipment and starting . And it fell to this friend, who manages several buildings on campus, to piece together a plan...…as the workday was winding down, Paula Milano received a phone call that threw her week into chaos. Milano, who helps run the Space Sciences Laboratory at UC Berkeley, had been gearing up for a satellite launch. But on the phone now was a friend of hers, with bad news: PG&E, the power company, the school that its electricity could be cut Wednesday—making the campus one of more than 700,000 customers .The outage was to keep forecasted high winds from jostling electrical equipment and starting . And it fell to this friend, who manages several buildings on campus, to piece together a plan...WW…

restless. It was late fall of 2017. The year was winding down, and so was his MD/PhD program at Columbia. Trying to figure out what was next in his life, he’d taken to long walks in the leaf-strewn West Village. One night as he paced up Hudson Street, his stomach filled with La Colombe coffee and his mind with papers, an idea began to bubble through the caffeine brume inside his brain.Crispr, for all its DNA-snipping precision, has always been . But if you want to replace a faulty gene with a healthy one, .In addition to programming a piece of guide RNA to tell Crispr where to cut, you have...…restless. It was late fall of 2017. The year was winding down, and so was his MD/PhD program at Columbia. Trying to figure out what was next in his life, he’d taken to long walks in the leaf-strewn West Village. One night as he paced up Hudson Street, his stomach filled with La Colombe coffee and his mind with papers, an idea began to bubble through the caffeine brume inside his brain.Crispr, for all its DNA-snipping precision, has always been . But if you want to replace a faulty gene with a healthy one, .In addition to programming a piece of guide RNA to tell Crispr where to cut, you have...WW…