Today's Liberal News

The Key to Understanding HBO’s The Sympathizer

In a recent scene from HBO’s The Sympathizer, a communist spy whom we only know as the Captain (played by Hoa Xuande) sits outside a Los Angeles car-repair station, staking out the man he’s planning to kill. His target is a former senior military officer, Major Oanh, who fled with him from Vietnam to the U.S., and who is starting over as a mechanic. When the Captain learns that Oanh is importing expired Vietnamese candy as a side hustle, he confronts him. To his shock, the man embraces him.

A French Reproach to Our Big, Baggy American Memoirs

Updated at 3:45 p.m. ET on May 20, 2024
One day the French writer Colombe Schneck, a total stranger, came to my house. She was a friend of a friend who lived in Paris, and it had somehow been arranged that she would drop by. The afternoon was gray and drizzly, and I felt slightly awkward about having this visitor I had never met coming to my house. But then she walked in, brisk, at ease. I liked her immediately. We launched right into big subjects; there was no chatter or small talk.

The Bird-Flu Host We Should Worry About

Of all the creatures stricken with this new and terrible H5N1 flu—the foxes, the bears, the eagles, ducks, chickens, and many other birds—dairy cattle are some of the most intimate with us. In the United States, more than 9 million milk cows live on farms, where people muck their manure, help birth their calves, tend their sick, and milk them daily.

“Rampage of Killings, Looting, Torture, Rape”: Ethnic Cleansing in Sudan’s Darfur Region

Human Rights Watch has documented ethnic cleansing in the West Darfur region of Sudan by the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces and allied militias against the Masalit people and other non-Arab communities. “These allied militia and the RSF then, from April until June, conducted a rampage of killings, of lootings, of torture, of rape,” says Belkis Wille, associate director with the Crisis, Conflict, and Arms Division at Human Rights Watch.

Human Rights Watch: Israeli Forces Attack Known Aid Worker Locations in Gaza

A new Human Rights Watch Report finds Israeli forces have attacked humanitarian aid convoys and facilities at least eight times since October 7 despite being given their coordinates. Israeli authorities did not issue advance warnings to any of the aid organizations before the attacks, which killed at least 15 people, including two children, and injured at least 16 others. More than 250 aid workers have been killed in Gaza over the past seven months, according to the United Nations.

Who Would Benefit From Ebrahim Raisi’s Death?

Accidents happen everywhere, but not all accidents are equal. Many hours after initial news broke about an “incident” involving a helicopter carrying Iranian President Ebrahim Raisi, the country’s state media has still not confirmed whether he is dead or alive. Various state outlets have published contradictory news—Was Raisi seen on video link after the accident? Was he not? Was the National Security Council meeting? Was it not?—signaling chaos and panic.

The Politician Whom SNL Is Tiring Of

Whether it’s an impression from a cast member or from its teeming roster of celebrity guests, Saturday Night Live’s political sketches often favor highlighting the absurd over making a point. That approach has only snowballed in our current era, when a growing swath of politicians practically write their own punch lines.

Meerkats Keep Dropping Dead From Heart Failure

At the start of the spring of 2015, Jeffrey, a three-year-old meerkat, was happily eating, tussling with his brothers, and surveying zoo patrons from his usual perch, his forepaws gathered and his black-tipped snout aloft. But one day in April, his caretakers discovered him in his enclosure, so weak that he could barely lift his head. By the time he was brought to Eric Baitchman, the head vet at Massachusetts’s Stone Zoo, Jeffrey was losing consciousness.

‘Not Like Us’

We’d gathered that day at the cafeteria’s “Black” table, cracking jokes and philosophizing during the free period that was our perk as upperclassmen. We came in different shades: bone white, tan and brownish, dark as a silhouette. One of my classmates, who fancied himself a lyricist, was insisting that Redman, a witty emcee from nearby Newark, New Jersey, was the greatest rapper ever. This was the late ’90s, and for my money, no one could compete with Jay-Z.

Bad Regimes Are Winning at Sport’s Expense

In 2021, on the eve of the Tokyo Olympics, 23 top Chinese swimmers tested positive for the drug trimetazidine. In its proper clinical setting, the medication is used to treat angina. But for an athlete or a coach willing to cheat, it is a performance-enhancing drug, boosting the heart muscle’s functioning. Nonprescription use of trimetazidine, or TMZ, is prohibited at all times, not just during competition; the default sanction for an athlete’s violation is a four-year ban.