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The 2024 race is coming into focus this week after Republican front runner Donald Trump’s victory in New Hampshire brought him one step closer to the GOP’s presidential nomination.

On April 21, 1965, three members of the Shangri-Las appeared on ABC’s musical variety show Shindig, their silhouettes faintly visible on the dark stage. With the soft thunk of a bass guitar, one spotlight flickered on to illuminate Mary Weiss, the band’s leader. As she crooned the opening lyrics to “Out in the Streets,” the lights gleamed over her bandmates, Marge and Mary-Ann Ganser, dancing in slow motion.

This is an edition of The Wonder Reader, a newsletter in which our editors recommend a set of stories to spark your curiosity and fill you with delight. Sign up here to get it every Saturday morning.
What does it really mean to “grow up”? As my colleague Julie Beck noted in 2016, markers of adulthood are always evolving, and a set definition is impossible to come by.

This article was originally published by The Conversation.
Were dinosaurs already on their way out when an asteroid hit Earth 66 million years ago, ending the Cretaceous period, which had begun about 79 million years earlier? It’s a question that has vexed paleontologists like us for more than 40 years.
In the late 1970s, debate began about whether dinosaurs were at their peak or in decline before their big extinction.

The NFL made some significant coaching hires recently that might indicate that the league is headed in a more promising direction when it comes to employing Black head coaches.
Thursday, ESPN reported that the Atlanta Falcons will be hiring Raheem Morris to be their next head coach, making him the third Black coach to be elevated during this season. Previous hiring cycles haven’t been kind to Black coaches.

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For me, playing squash is not about achievement. That’s what makes it so much fun.

A jury in New York today put a price on Donald Trump’s inability to keep his mouth shut, awarding the writer E. Jean Carroll $83.3 million in damages in a defamation lawsuit.
It’s the second time a jury has ordered Trump to pay Carroll. She alleged in 2019 that Trump raped her in a department-store dressing room in the 1990s. When Trump denied it, Carroll sued him for defamation and battery. Last May, a jury found Trump liable for assaulting her and awarded her $5 million.

Waiting to obtain justice from an international tribunal is a bit like waiting for the messiah: You are not likely to find what you’re looking for anytime soon, but the pastime remains popular. Today the International Court of Justice announced its first ruling in a case brought by South Africa against Israel, alleging genocide in Gaza. South Africa had sought a preliminary ruling that would force Israel to stop fighting while a full case could be heard.

All of a sudden, the U.S. has become the biggest liquid-natural-gas exporter in the world. Supplied by a souped-up hydraulic-fracturing industry, and spurred by Russia’s war on Ukraine, which has hampered European gas access, LNG export terminals are being built on a monumental scale throughout the U.S. Gulf Coast, in places so beset by climate disasters that homes there are now deemed uninsurable.

The International Court of Justice in The Hague today made an initial ruling, four weeks after an application from South Africa that accused Israel of committing genocide against Palestinians. The court ordered Israel to ensure that its military does not commit acts of genocide against Palestinians, to immediately improve humanitarian aid to Palestinians, and to prevent and punish genocidal incitement against Palestinians.