The Washington Post stories, Page 4
Gay couple attacked on London bus after refusing to kiss in front of male gang
LONDON — Two women were punched by male assailants on a London bus after the couple refused to perform a kiss for the gang that surrounded and taunted them as lesbians, according to an account by one of the victims. The alleged attack last week was revealed in social media...
Broadway insiders are quietly betting on streaming musicals
NEW YORK — This would seem like a strange moment to worry about Broadway’s future. The oldest entertainment business in the United States is thriving. Thanks to shows such as “Dear Evan Hansen,” “Be More Chill,” “Hamilton” and “Harry Potter and the Cursed Child,” young people are flocking to Broadway’s...
Private citizens can now fly to the International Space Station
NASA is planning to allow private astronauts to fly to the International Space Station, as well as open up the orbiting laboratory to more commercial interests, including filming advertisements in an attempt to help fund its crash plan to return astronauts to the moon by 2024, the agency announced Friday....
District considering tearing down Columbine High School
For more than two decades since it entered the American lexicon, Columbine High School has stood on the same site in Littleton, Colo., little changed since the massacre that ushered in an era of mass killings. But now, the district is considering tearing down the school, citing overwhelming attention, and...
Pelosi tells colleagues she wants Trump ‘in prison,’ not impeached
WASHINGTON — House Speaker Nancy Pelosi told several high-ranking colleagues Tuesday night that she wants to see President Trump “in prison” but does not want to impeach him, according to two officials familiar with the conversation. The California Democrat was meeting privately with five chairmen of committees with investigative powers...
U.S. added 27,000 private-sector jobs in May, lowest number since 2010
Private employers added fewer workers in May than any month in the past nine years, falling far short of analyst estimates and sending a troubling signal about the state of the U.S. labor market. Stock markets gave up some gains in premarket trading Wednesday in response to the report from...
Oakland, Calif., decriminalizes ‘magic mushrooms,’ other natural psychedelics
The city council of Oakland, Calif., unanimously passed a resolution Tuesday that decriminalizes the use of entheogenic plants, a category that includes flora such as “magic mushrooms,” cactuses, and iboga, that can induce a psychedelic experience. The resolution states that law enforcement should not prioritize arresting or investigating adults who...
Trump administration imposes new restrictions on fetal tissue research
WASHINGTON — The Trump administration on Wednesday ended medical research by government scientists using fetal tissue and also cancelled a multi-million-dollar contract for a nongovernment lab that uses the material to test new HIV treatments. “Promoting the dignity of human life from conception to natural death is one of the...
YouTube gets more aggressive in banning supremacist, hoax videos
YouTube said Wednesday it will remove false videos alleging that major events like the Holocaust didn’t happen, as well as a broad array of content by white supremacists and others in a move to more aggressively crack down on hate speech. The Google-owned video site, along with its Silicon Valley...
New poll shows Biden, Sanders with sizable leads over Trump in Michigan
A new poll shows both Democratic White House hopefuls Joe Biden and Bernie Sanders with substantial leads in matchups with President Donald Trump in Michigan, one of the Rust Belt states key to his 2016 electoral college victory. Biden, the former vice president, and Sanders, a senator from Vermont, led...
Trump administration prohibits group travel by Americans to Cuba
WASHINGTON — The Treasury Department published new regulations Tuesday, ending group travel to Cuba for “people to people” educational purposes and prohibiting visits to the island via cruise ships, personal aircraft or personal boats. The regulations, part of President Trump’s continuing rollback of the Obama-era thaw with Cuba, implement policies...
Biden’s camp admits lifting passages for policy plans
Joe Biden’s presidential campaign lifted language without credit, at times word for word, when crafting its education and climate plans, incidents the campaign acknowledged and said were inadvertent. The incidents appeared to be staff errors when detailing Biden’s policies, and they underscored how hastily his campaign was attempting to put...
House passes immigration bill that would protect ‘Dreamers’
WASHINGTON — The House on Tuesday passed a bill that would offer a path to citizenship to more than 2 million undocumented immigrants, including “Dreamers” who were brought to the United States as children. The vote was 237-to-187 for the American Dream and Promise Act of 2019, which would grant...
Former deputy Scot Peterson, who didn’t confront Parkland shooter, is arrested
The former Broward County, Fla., sheriff’s deputy who did not pursue the gunman attacking a Parkland high school last year was arrested Tuesday and charged with child neglect and negligence stemming from his actions that day. Scot Peterson, 56, was arrested and charged with 11 counts, including seven counts of...
The history and reasoning for hurricane names
Naming hurricanes and big wildfires is now such an ingrained part of our culture that most people don’t think about how and why naming began or how storms or fires acquire their names. Names are the one thing hurricanes and wildfires have in common. Both are named soon after they...
Newspaper ad for a hand-carved chair ran for 6 years
Larry Johnson was downsizing his home in British Columbia and decided to sell the enormous, hand-carved wooden throne that occupied most of his living room. On Feb. 8, 2013, he took out a now-famous ad in his local newspaper, offering to sell the grand chair for $5,000 in Canadian dollars....
‘Jeopardy!’ producer: ‘Appropriate’ action planned in leak of James Holzhauer’s loss
This past weekend, “Jeopardy!” executive producer Harry Friedman was looking forward to Monday, when millions of viewers would eagerly tune in to see if phenom James Holzhauer would break champion Ken Jennings’ record winnings. Holzhauer only needed about $59,000, so it seemed like a distinct possibility. Then, Sunday afternoon, Friedman...
Forewarned is forearmed for staying healthy while traveling
A virus with a “terrible” hacking cough eclipsed Deirdre Gerard’s recent South American cruise on the Viking Sun. But for the playwright and her husband, the real disappointment set in after they got home. “Once we started getting better, we heard from other passengers that half the ship had had...
Calvin Johnson to Lions: ‘Put that money back in my pocket’Video
Calvin Johnson has kept his distance from the Detroit Lions since his abrupt retirement after the 2015 season, which is a less-than-ideal situation for a sad-sack franchise that has had so few recent megastars apart from Barry Sanders. And with Johnson’s first crack at the Pro Football Hall of Fame...
Pentagon tells White House to stop politicizing militaryVideo
Acting defense secretary Patrick Shanahan had a message for the White House: Politics and the military don’t mix. Shanahan and Navy officials have faced intense scrutiny over a White House request to hide the USS John S. McCain warship during President Trump’s visit to Japan last month — a moment,...
Hogan will not challenge Trump, leaving president’s GOP critics with limited options
Maryland Gov. Larry Hogan, who was considering an insurgent White House bid that would have championed traditional GOP values, will not challenge President Donald Trump for the Republican Party’s 2020 nomination. “I’m not going to be a candidate for president in 2020,” Hogan said in an interview. Hogan’s choice dashes...
SAT’s new rating system faces its own adversity
College admissions testing was long viewed as a great equalizer. All students could aim for a maximum 36 on the ACT or 1600 on the SAT, no matter where they grew up or went to school. Their scores functioned as a currency of merit for a nation that aspired to...
4 million gallons of water to be drained from Lincoln Memorial Reflecting Pool
About 4 million gallons of water will be drained from the Lincoln Memorial Reflecting Pool so crews can fix a broken water line that’s caused algae to form in it. “The problem with the water line has compromised the circulation system in the pool, leading to issues with the water...
Trump hitting Mexico with 5% tariff in response to migrants
WASHINGTON — President Trump is preparing to threaten Mexico with sweeping new tariffs as part of an attempt to force the country to crack down on a surge of Central American migrants, administration officials said Thursday, a risky move that could rattle already jittery financial markets and imperil an impending...
U.S. measles cases in first five months of 2019 surpass total for any year since 1994
The United States has reported 971 cases of measles in the first five months of 2019, the greatest number since 1994, when 963 cases were reported for the entire year, federal health officials said Thursday. The agency has typically been updating its measles cases weekly, on Mondays, but announced the...
