Mikhail Gorbachev, the last Soviet leader, was set to throw a Zoom party in quarantine to celebrate his 90th birthday on Tuesday, as President Vladimir Putin hailed him as an "outstanding statesman" who influenced the course of history.

Hayley Arceneaux thought her childhood dream of being an astronaut was over when she had part of her femur removed when she was treated for bone cancer at 10 years old. Nineteen years later, the physician's assistant in the oncology unit at St. Jude Children's Research Hospital is set to realize her dream of traveling to outer space despite having no experience as an astronaut.

Most people walk by trash they pass on streets and sidewalks. Some people don’t even notice it. Then there’s Billy Adams. He not only sees it, he picks it up — all of it. Since the spring, the 54-year-old Montgomery County man has spent his daily walks into the District collecting garbage around the city, usually filling at least two trash bags with waste.

Someone was always going to be left holding the bag. That’s the way it works. After weeks of magnificent highs, GameStop’s stock is plummeting. As of this writing it’s at $57, down from last week’s high of more than $400. As the stock falls, investors are selling off, which only increases the fall. The destitute players who held on to the stock too long are now gathering online to commiserate and return to the activity that started it all—posting.

The name of Nance Legins-Costley could resonate amid the likes of Harriet Tubman, Frederick Douglass and other abolitionist figures. But her story is hardly known. Not in Illinois, where – despite anti-slavery laws – she was born into bondage. Not in the city of Pekin, where – despite anti-Black attitudes – she became a beloved community figure. And certainly not in Peoria, where – despite her impressive life – she is buried in ignominy.

This former neo-Nazi transformed his life and spent MLK day with Dr. King's daughter Dr. Bernice King.

This past April, Ric Jackson helped a neighbor who was looking for someone to fix the brakes on his daughter's bicycle. "I fixed it up. He took it back. And she was thrilled and he was thrilled," Jackson said. "And it's just mushroomed." The avid cyclist and retired mathematician has since fixed more than 650 bikes for friends, neighbors, even strangers.

Ben Bova was a hard-science guy — and a passionate space program booster — and his visions of the future encompassed a dizzying array of technological advances (and resulting horrors or delights), including cloning, sex in space, climate change, the nuclear arms race, Martian colonies and the search for extraterrestrials. In newspaper articles, short stories and more than 100 books, he explored these and other knotty human problems.

The French designer Pierre Cardin, who upended fashion in the 1960s and 70s with his futuristic looks and pioneering approach to merchandise, has died at the age of 98. His death was announced by France’s Fine Arts Academy on Twitter. Cardin’s family told Agence France-Presse he died in hospital in Neuilly, near Paris.

A retired business consultant has walked the equivalent of the circumference of the Earth without leaving his home city. Vinod Bajaj, 70, walked 40,075 kilometres over the past four years in Limerick, in the west of Ireland. He has encouraged others to keep active in the midst of the pandemic.

Deciphering the most beloved, most reviled children’s-book author in history.

An Iranian woman who shocked the internet with her attempts to look like actor Angelina Jolie has been sentenced to 10 years in prison, according to her lawyers in Iran. Sahar Tabar, whose real name is Fatemeh Khishvand, was sentenced last week for corruption of young people and disrespecting the Islamic Republic, The Guardian and BBC News Persian report. She will spend the next 10 years in prison, according to Iranian journalist and activist Masih Alinejad.

British actor David Prowse, who played Darth Vader in the original "Star Wars" trilogy, has died aged 85, his management company announced Sunday. Prowse died after a short illness, according to his agent Thomas Bowington. CNN reported in 2018 that Prowse was being treated for prostate cancer.

Frédéric Chopin’s archivists and biographers have for centuries turned a deliberate blind eye to the composer’s homoerotic letters in order to make the Polish national icon conform to conservative norms, it has been alleged. Chopin’s Men, a two-hour radio programme that aired on Swiss public broadcaster SRF’s arts channel, argues that the composer’s letters have been at times deliberately mistranslated, rumours of affairs with women exaggerated...

When COVID-19 tore through Donald Wallace’s nursing home, he was one of the lucky few to avoid infection. He died a horrible death anyway. Hale and happy before the pandemic, the 75-year-old retired Alabama truck driver became so malnourished and dehydrated that he dropped to 98 pounds and looked to his son like he’d been in a concentration camp.

It’s not exactly a secret that Elon Musk, billionaire CEO of SpaceX and Tesla, self-proclaimed Thai pedophilia expert, and designer of death race trucks, doesn’t give a flying fuck what other people think about his actions.

Two new studies find links between Dark Triad personality traits and noncompliance with coronavirus restrictions, although the correlations are minor compared to factors other than personality.

One day in June 2019, Jitarth Jadeja went outside to smoke a cigarette. For two years he'd been in the virtual cult of QAnon. But now he'd watched a YouTube video that picked apart the last element of the theory he believed in. Standing there smoking, he would say later, he felt "shattered." He had gone down the QAnon rabbit hole; now, having emerged from it, he had no idea what to do next.

Sienna Miller has praised late Hollywood star Chadwick Boseman for donating part of his own salary to boost her pay packet on 21 Bridges. The pair starred as detectives in the thriller, which was released last year. Miller told Empire: "Everybody understands about the pay disparity in Hollywood, but I asked for a number that the studio wouldn't get to. "And Chadwick ended up donating some of his salary to get me to the number I had asked for."

Three years in, I had basically arrived—I had been transferred to the day shift. It was the premier shift. You wanted to get the day shift because those are the best hours, good days off. On my beat, they started telling me: “We really want you to start policing this section of Boulevard and Ponce de Leon Avenue, basically the Bedford Pines Apartments. We think there are dope boys in there. We think there’s a lot of illegal activity happening and we want to really focus there. So we’re gonna put up signs that say you can’t park on the street.