In mid-2023, around the time Elon Musk rebranded Twitter as X but before he discontinued free academic access to the platform’s data, my colleagues and I looked for signs of social bot accounts posting content generated by artificial intelligence. Social bots are AI software that produce content and interact with people on social media. We ...Read more

Love and hate seem like obvious opposites. Love, whether romantic or otherwise, involves a sense of warmth and affection for others. Hate involves feelings of disdain. Love builds up, whereas hate destroys.

However, this description of love and hate treats them as merely emotions. As a religious ethicist, I am interested in the role ...Read more

Addiction is one of the most common and consequential chronic medical conditions in the United States. Nationwide, more than 46 million people met the criteria for a substance abuse disorder as of 2021, the most recent data available.

Decades of evidence show that addiction is a chronic, relapsing disease of the brain. Nonetheless, ...Read more

Thousands of Indian farmers gathered across the country from Punjab to Tamil Nadu to demonstrate against a long-awaited trade deal with the United States, an agreement that protesters say could hurt domestic agriculture.

Thursday’s rallies — which went ahead even after the U.S. watered down its language around the deal — underscore the ...Read more

Keir Starmer’s net favorability rating picked up in the aftermath of his leadership crisis this week, logging its highest reading since August, YouGov said.

The data shows the British public still holds a negative view of the prime minister, with just 22% saying they held a favorable view of Starmer, against 69% who see him unfavorably. That ...Read more

WASHINGTON — Five days after federal immigration enforcement agents killed the second of his constituents, Minneapolis Mayor Jacob Frey had a message for his peers: Speak out.

“Mayors, we do not back down to bullies. We stand up for democracy,” Frey said in a speech last month in Washington, D.C., at a gathering of hundreds of mayors from...Read more

CHICAGO — The last time Mariely Rivera’s daughter was in her house, she got in her mother’s bed, laid down next to her and hugged her.

“Mom, I have made my decision,” her daughter said. “I’m going to go back with him.”

Stephanie Gutiérrez was 20 — an adult — and all her mother could do was ask her to think about what she ...Read more

Rebekah Stewart, a nurse at the U.S. Public Health Service, got a call last April that brought her to tears. She had been selected for deployment to the Trump administration’s new immigration detention operation at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba.

This posting combined Donald Trump’s longtime passion to use the offshore base to move “some bad dudes...Read more

CHICAGO -- Inside an Irving Park bungalow, kids raced barefoot through the dining room, zooming past paper chains taped to the ceiling. Some slouched in couch chairs, trading stories in a game of Dungeons & Dragons. Others lay on the hardwood floor, flipping through picture books.

Teacher Claire Jakubiszyn knelt beside a 7-year-old boy, ...Read more

SEATTLE — As artificial intelligence chatbots become better at mimicking human conversations, the potential for damage has grown, particularly for people who turn to them for mental health advice and to discuss plans to harm themselves.

State lawmakers and Gov. Bob Ferguson are seeking to add mental health safeguards to AI chatbots through ...Read more

MINNEAPOLIS — New polling shows Minnesotans and people across the country widely disapprove of President Donald Trump’s immigration crackdown in the state, a shift that’s turned his deportation campaign from a political strength into a potential liability ahead of the midterm elections.

Negative marks on Operation Metro Surge from ...Read more

LOS ANGELES — The head of the L.A. 2028 Olympics committee.

A director of Hollywood hits.

An NFL owner.

A celebrity chef.

They are among the boldface names from Los Angeles who have emerged in the latest dump from the Epstein files.

The 3 million pages recently released by the Department of Justice have sent shock waves across the globe. ...Read more

More Americans than expected enrolled in Affordable Care Act health insurance plans for this year, after premium subsidies were dramatically cut — but it remains to be seen whether they’ll keep the coverage as their costs mount.

It’s all part of a drama that roiled the ACA’s 2026 open enrollment period. Congressional debate over whether...Read more

It is in the U.S. Constitution: States decide how federal elections are run, not the executive branch.

Yet over the last year, the Trump administration has sought to exert more control. In March, President Donald Trump issued a sweeping executive order requiring documented proof of citizenship to vote in federal elections. The order has since ...Read more

Bangladesh heads to the polls Thursday in a high-stakes general election that will shape the nation’s transition following the 2024 student-led revolution that ended Sheikh Hasina’s 15-year rule.

All but one of 300 seats in parliament are up for grabs in a contest that has coalesced around two rival blocs: the mainstream Bangladesh ...Read more

A landmine explosion wounded three Thai soldiers near the Cambodian border, in an incident that risks undermining a fragile ceasefire between the two Southeast Asian neighbors.

One soldier lost a leg and two others sustained minor injuries in the blast on Wednesday in Si Sa Ket province, which borders Cambodia, the Thai army said in a statement...Read more

Immigration-rights attorneys said they saw “significant disarray and chaos” this week when they inspected the Whipple Federal Building, where hundreds of immigrants have been detained by federal authorities in recent months, according to court documents filed Tuesday, Feb. 10.

Attorneys for Minneapolis nonprofit Advocates for Human Rights ...Read more

After months of behind-the-scenes meetings, progressive lawmakers in the California Assembly this week introduced what is likely to be their signature revenue raising proposal for 2026 — a bill targeting large global corporations who they say have shifted profits offshore to lower their tax bills for decades.

The effort, which would rewrite ...Read more

Gallup has scrapped its presidential approval tracking polls for good just as President Donald Trump hits rock bottom in its numbers.

The venerable public opinion firm announced Wednesday that it would no longer publish any approval or favorability ratings of any political figures, but suggested the decision has nothing to do with Trump’s ...Read more