Herman Wouk, the versatile, Pulitzer Prize winning author of such million-selling novels as “The Caine Mutiny” and “The Winds of War” whose steady Jewish faith inspired his stories of religious values and secular success, died on Friday at 103.

In threatening an escalation of a trade war with China over the weekend, President Donald Trump asserted that the tariffs already in place have boosted the economy. “These payments are partially responsible for our great economic results,” he tweeted on Sunday. Economists disagree. “It’s pretty hard to justify the argument that tariffs have strengthened the economy,” said Dan North, chief economist at Euler Hermes North America.

Excessive wealth and power commanded by a small group of multi-millionaires and billionaires—the richest one-tenth of 1 percent—poses an existential threat to America’s economic vitality, democracy, and civil society. It’s well-known by now that the richest 1 percent of American households have essentially doubled the share of national income they claim since the late 1970s. Less well-known is that inequality has even risen within the top 1 percent, with the top 10 percent of that overal...

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Six months ago, I was excited: The OnePlus 6T had just been officially announced bringing in-display fingerprint sensors to the mainstream US market. This was a genuinely new technology, after all, in a field of nearly-identical gadgets. It gave us all something to talk about as we anticipated all the ways it would change The Phone Experience for the better. But, six months later I've come to the conclusion that in-display fingerprint readers, as they stand today, were a mistake.

Elizabeth Barker Johnson stood frozen in the doorway, gripping her walker tightly, as the lights flicked on, revealing 60 of her closest loved ones. It wouldn’t be the last surprise of the day as the World War II veteran celebrated her 99th birthday. After cake, Johnson was presented with a ruby-red cap and gown and an invitation to finally walk at Winston-Salem State University’s graduation, 70 years after she completed her teaching degree there.

Three families of dynastic wealth — that’s the Walton, Koch and Mars families — have seen their wealth increase close to 6,000% since 1982, according to the Billionaire Bonanza report by the progressive think tank Institute for Policy Studies. Their combined wealth – a staggering $348.7 billion as of October 2018 – is more than the combined wealth of 4 million American families of median wealth.

Scientists have found evidence of an ancient solar “superflare” hidden in a meteorite that was first found in Kazakhstan in 1962, according to a new paper. Meteorites here on Earth can be useful for telling the story the Solar System’s history, specifically through the elements they contain. By analyzing the Efremovka meteorite, a pair of researchers determined that a superflare that occurred around 500,000 years after the Sun’s birth could have emitted as many x-rays as the largest sola...

The sixth mass extinction is coming. A draft report from the United Nations obtained by Agence France-Presse says that up to 1 million species of living organisms face extinction as a result of human influence. The report, which is set to be revealed on May 6, adds that the loss of biodiversity, while closely linked, poses "no less of a threat" than climate change. Deforestation has led to the loss of greenhouse gas-absorbing trees, polluted waters are killing protein-rich fish and lim...

Pope Francis has admitted that clerics have sexually abused nuns, and in one case they were kept as sex slaves. He said in that case his predecessor, Pope Benedict, was forced to shut down an entire congregation of nuns who were being abused by priests. It is thought to be the first time that Pope Francis has acknowledged the sexual abuse of nuns by the clergy.

Everything has a beginning. That’s true for stories, for people, for the universe and even for chemistry. The Big Bang itself produced just a handful of elements (variations of hydrogen, helium and lithium nuclei), so researchers have a pretty good sense of what the first atoms and molecules might have been. But the very first molecular bond to form, linking together atoms of different elements in a single molecule, has long been missing in action.

When meteorites slam into the moon, they undoubtedly kick up a little dust. Now, a new study suggests they also shake loose quite a bit of water—something on the order of 200 tons each year. Planetary scientists were tipped to the leaching after reviewing sensor data from a moon-orbiting probe. Between November 2013 and April 2014, the Lunar Atmosphere and Dust Environment Explorer recorded occasional spikes in the numbers of particles, including water molecules, that were lofted off the moon.

Old EGYPTIANS WERE getting inked up sooner than we suspected. Another examination of two mummies demonstrates the pair were wearing tattoos. The mummies have a place with a gathering of six found in 1900. They were named the Gebelein mummies after the district in which they were found. Presently in the ownership of the British Museum, they were reanalyzed as a component of a continuous undertaking to reevaluate important ancient rarities.

Excitement about exoplanets skyrocketed when rocky Earth-like planets were discovered orbiting in the habitable zone of some of our closest stars – until hopes for life were dashed by the high levels of radiation bombarding those worlds. Proxima-b, only 4.24 light years away, receives 250 times more X-ray radiation than Earth and could experience deadly levels of ultraviolet radiation on its surface. How could life survive such a bombardment? Cornell astronomers say that life already has survi...