The U.S. has spent over $5.9 trillion on wars that have directly led to the deaths of close to 500,000 people since the 9/11 attacks in September 2001. Around 370,000 died due to direct war-related violence, while several times more died as a result of the indirect effects of war such as malnutrition and damaged infrastructure, according to Costs of War, an annual research project published by the Watson Institute for International and Public Affairs at Brown University.

US authorities on Friday agreed on how to regulate food products cultured from animal cells—paving the way to get so-called "lab meat" on American plates.

When it’s time for lunch at Chick-fil-A in Avon, it's all hands on deck as the employees try to get through the rush before they can see their favorite customer. "If we can get to Ernie, it’s been a good day,” laughed owner Chris Tincher. Ernie, a World War II veteran, first came to the restaurant about a year ago. He comes back nearly every day of the week.

The Maryland man who interrupted a performance of “Fiddler on the Roof” Wednesday night to yell, “Heil Hitler, Heil Trump!” has said he is now “so embarrassed and ashamed and disgusted” with his own actions. Anthony Derlunas, 58, apologized profusely Friday during an interview on his front porch with WBAL-TV 11, a local NBC affiliate.

Despite the easing of taboos and the rise of hookup apps, Americans are in the midst of a sex recession.

The Justice Department inadvertently named Julian Assange in a court filing in an unrelated case, suggesting prosecutors have prepared charges against the WikiLeaks founder under seal. Assange’s name appears twice in an August court filing from a federal prosecutor in Virginia, who was attempting to keep sealed a separate case involving a man accused of coercing a minor for sex.

When U.S. President Donald Trump signed the order to keep Guantanamo Bay open, he shut down the State Department office responsible for closing it and resettling released detainees. That office, called the Special Envoy for Guantanamo Closure, was also responsible for tracking inmates already released. Now several have gone missing.

Apparent criminal charges against Julian Assange are thrusting the WikiLeaks founder back into American politics — a development that could create awkwardness across the political spectrum. Many liberals and civil rights activists have defended Assange as a journalist entitled to First Amendment protections. Conservatives have celebrated him for exposing Hillary Clinton’s emails in 2016. And President Donald Trump, who declared his “love” for Assange’s website during the 2016 contest...

The US protagonists in a viral fundraising campaign for a homeless man have been charged with theft by deception and conspiracy. Kate McClure and Mark D'Amico raised more than $400,000 (£313,000) for homeless ex-marine Johnny Bobbitt. But in August, Mr Bobbitt launched legal action against the couple, claiming he did not get his fair share. Now, prosecutors in New Jersey say Mr Bobbitt was complicit in the alleged plot. All three face the same charges.

A major problem with Mars missions: Bringing enough fuel for a return journey. In a striking new first-person account in IEEE Spectrum, NASA team lead Kurt Leucht writes about how the space agency is hard at work on a potential solution he hopes will let future Mars missions — or even colonists — extract rocket fuel from Martian soil.

Miley Cyrus lost her home in southern California’s Woolsey Fire, one of three major fires currently tearing through the state. Gerard Butler photographed himself standing in the wreckage of his Malibu home, which he said was only partially destroyed. Villa de la Vina, the Spanish-style home best known for being the set of The Bachelor and The Bachelorette, was damaged by the blaze. The ranch that was recently used as the set of Westworld burned to the ground. Kim Kardashian and Kanye West reportedly hired a team of private firefighters to save their $60 million home, as well as their neighbors’ mansions.

Amazon has selected a pair of cities to host its new, expanded headquarters: Crystal City in Arlington, Virginia, and Long Island City in Queens, New York. Amazon’s decision came after a 14-month search that saw cities around the U.S. promise tax breaks, taxpayer-funded infrastructure and business-friendly ordinances in an effort to win what Amazon says will be $5 billion in new investment and thousands of jobs.

The morning of September 22, 2017, Cristopher Precopia went to work at a lumber yard in Georgetown. By the end of the day, he was in jail facing 99 years in prison. But he didn't know why. Why had police come to his work and arrested him? Why was he being accused of these horrible crimes? Who was accusing him? She said he broke into her home in Temple. She said he sliced an "X" into her chest with a box cutter.

“First Mueller and now me. When we are fully exonerated I am coming for you Jacob Wohl aka Surefire,” Michael Avenatti tweeted.

Tyler Barriss is poised to face a stiff punishment for the game-related swatting call that ultimately killed Wichita resident Andrew Finch, not to mention a host of other crimes. Barriss has pleaded guilty to 51 charges as part of a deal, including making a false report resulting in death as well as bomb threats to numerous US states and Canada. The agreement will see him face at least 20 years in prison if the judge approves the terms.

The lawsuit claims the defendants knew that "PFOA and PFOS were highly soluble and mobile in water, highly likely to contaminate water supplies and other sensitive receptors, were persistent in the environment, and would bio-accumulate in humans causing serious health effects."

From the New York Times: In the northern town of Paradise, the ruins of houses and businesses smoldered throughout the day, while in Southern California, tens of thousands of residents fled their homes and jammed onto highways. Exotic lemurs and parrots were packed up and carried away to safety as fires ringed the Los Angeles Zoo in Griffith Park. Officials estimated that the blaze in the north, called the Camp Fire, had destroyed a staggering 6,700 structures — most of them residential. Such vast devastation would make it the most destructive fire in modern state history.

In his years-long career developing software for power grids, Stan McHann had never before heard the ominous noise that rang out last Wednesday. Standing in the middle of a utility command center, he flinched as a cyberattack tripped the breakers in all seven of the grid's low voltage substations, plunging the system into darkness. "I heard all the substations trip off and it was just like bam bam bam bam bam bam bam bam," McHann says. "The power’s out. All you can do is say, OK, we have to start from scratch bringing the power back up. You just take a deep breath and dig in."

So by now most people have probably read the New York Times deep dive into what can only be described as Facebook's deep well of internal dysfunction and self delusion. While there's a lot of interesting bits in the piece, one portion that...

Airbnb is making its biggest donation yet in its hometown — $5 million — toward helping address the homelessness crisis in San Francisco. The announcement comes at a time when politicians and social justice organizations are increasingly calling upon tech companies to give more to the city where they created their wealth. Last week, San Franciscans voted to pass a “homelessness tax” — Prop C — on large corporations in the city.

What would Jesus think about the Trump administration? The YouTube comedy group Friend Dog Studios created an updated version of Jesus to share a new take on biblical quotes just for modern Republicans. GOP Jesus also shares some thoughts on healing the sick, turning the other cheek and the War on Christmas.

Nearly a year after the tax cut, economic growth has accelerated. Wage growth has not. Companies are buying back stock and business investment is a mixed bag. The $1.5 trillion tax overhaul that President Trump signed into law late last year has already given the American economy a jolt, at least temporarily. It has fattened the paychecks of most American workers, padded the profits of large corporations and sped economic growth.

Can states’ rights save us from a second civil war? By Jonathan Taplin.

A police officer has shot and killed an armed security guard at a suburban Chicago bar, and now the guard's mother is suing police.

Toyota USA is buying brave nurse who risked his life to save others, a new Toyota Tundra to replace the one that got burnt on her drive back towards danger.

A senior Environmental Protection Agency administrator responsible for nine southeastern states has been indicted by an Alabama grand jury on charges he conspired to violate ethics laws, reportedly in connection with a messy bribery scandal that has links to former Attorney General Jeff Sessions and has roiled local politics.

Months after a student was expelled for refusing to stand for her school's Pledge of Allegiance, the Texas Attorney General is intervening on the school's behalf. The mother of Windfern High School senior India Landry launched a legal battle against the Houston-area school, saying her daughter wasn't able to practice free speech.

We may not punch ballots on Election Day anymore, but for one 78-year-old man, he was punching something: a big black bear. Sonny Pumphrey was cleaning up fall leaves in his driveway in White Oak, North Carolina, on Nov. 6 when he came face to face with a mother bear and her two cubs. He said that the cubs ran away when he saw them, but that the mother stayed behind, leaving him with no choice but to confront her.

The men and women relaxing on yoga mats recently at a Minneapolis meditation center didn’t know it, but most belonged to the fastest-growing religion in America — none at all. They included a former Lutheran who left the church because the Bible clashed with science, a former Catholic who became leery of its teachings, a former Baptist uninspired by Sunday services, a young man raised with no religion.

The US federal government could soon spend more on interest for its debt then on the military, The New York Times reported. Interest payments are expected to make up 13% of the federal budget a decade from now, up from 6.6% in 2017. Tax cuts, spending increases and rising interest rates will make it more difficult to respond to future recessions or spend on other needs, the Times said.

Facebook is, once again, a political piñata. In the aftermath of a New York Times story that meticulously revealed Facebook’s cloddish response to the disinformation and hacking campaigns around the 2016 election, the company is battling renewed criticism from Washington, D.C. It’s not like Facebook has had much of a break — though after both Mark Zuckerberg and Sheryl Sandberg testified extensively before Congress, you might think that the...

The WikiLeaks founder has long drawn the attention of federal investigators for revealing U.S. secrets.

Western bigwigs were a no-show at China’s biggest web conference. But in their absence, the local overseers of the nation’s technology industry were only too happy to plug their unique vision for the global internet. Unlike 2017, when Tim Cook and Sundar Pichai graced the World Internet Conference in Wuzhen, this year’s gathering was a decidedly domestic affair, presided over by the likes of Tencent Holdings Ltd. Chairman Ma Huateng.

For the past two years, the American left has been haunted by a number: 53. It is the percentage of white women who voted for Donald Trump in the 2016 presidential election. In the sectors of the left where the figure and its implications have become a perennial theme, the number is treated both as disappointing and darkly unsurprising, a reflection of the conventional wisdom that white women would rather choose the racism espoused by the Republican party than join in the moral coalition represented by men of color and other women.

We know there are atheists in the military; about a third of active duty soldiers don’t have a religious affiliation. Yet many Veteran’s Day services include religious elements that are off-putting to many of the very people who are supposed to be honored. Johnny Pike, American Atheists’ state director in Kentucky and an Army veteran himself, has some excellent advice for anyone looking to honor soldiers this weekend.