I’ve Been Reporting on MS-13 for a Year. Here Are the 5
There’s one thing everyone can agree with President Donald Trump on about the street gang MS-13: The group specializes in spectacular violence. Its members attack in groups, in the woods, at night, luring teens to their deaths with the promise of girls or weed. One Long Island boy told me he doesn’t go to parties anymore because he worries any invitation could be a trap. A victim’s father showed me a death certificate that said his son’s head had been bashed in, then lowered his voice and added that the boy’s bones had been marked by machete slashes, but he didn’t want the mother to know that.
We Didn't Have to Drop the Bomb
Seventy years ago this week, the United States ushered in the age of nuclear terror by dropping atomic bombs on the Japanese cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, killing an estimated 200,000 and injuring another 100,000 who would eventually succumb to their wounds or radiation poisoning. At the time, the American public was led to believe that the bomb helped end the war and “saved lives.” This was never true.
GOP county leader shares fake photo of Blasey Ford
The internet meme machine went into overdrive when sexual assault allegations were made against Supreme Court nominee Brett Kavanaugh. Dallas Woodhouse, director of the North Carolina Republican Party, tweeted that one of Kavanaugh’s accusers, Julie Swetnick, should be arrested, The News & Observer reported. Bloggers claimed to have photos of professor Christine Blasey Ford, the first woman to bring forward allegations against Kavanaugh, has been pictured George Soros, and that Ford’s lawyer was pictured with Hillary Clinton. As PolitiFact shows, it’s not Ford in the photos. Now, Lanny Lancaster, Cabarrus County GOP chairman, has shared a photo allegedly of Ford, one of Kavanaugh’s accusers, that was originally posted on Facebook by an account under the name Joseph T.
Fact-checking an immigration meme that's been circulating for more than a decade
A viral image on social media -- one that’s critical of illegal immigration -- has been circulating for years. The list of claims first circulated in the form of a chain email in 2006, according to Snopes.com. Six years later, we checked several of the claims ourselves. With immigration in the headlines today, these claims are popular again. So we’ll take a fresh look at them here. All told, the list is heavy with claims that are unsupported, misleading, or simply wrong.
Abusive Relationships: Why It's so hard to leave click 2x
“And so I stayed.” In a widely read blog post, Jennifer Willoughby wrote this phrase after each of the many reasons she gave for enduring what she described as her abusive marriage to former White House aide Rob Porter. Willoughby’s reasons are consistent with those that hundreds of abused women report to researchers. These are women often caught in a web made from isolating, confidence-crushing abuse and by realistic fears of greater harm should they leave. They also can feel caught when they meet indifference from others or, worse, insults that add to their injuries. I am a social work scholar whose research focuses on the problems of dating and domestic violence.
4 Ways Fred Trump Made Donald Trump and His Siblings Rich
In Donald J. Trump’s version of how he got rich, he was the master dealmaker who parlayed an initial $1 million loan from his father into a $10 billion empire. It was his guts and gumption that overcame setbacks, and his father, Fred C. Trump, was simply a cheerleader.
Sorting the Real Sandy Photos From the Fakes
With Hurricane Sandy approaching the New York metro area, the nation's eyes are turning to its largest city. Photos of storms and flooding are popping up all over Twitter, and while many are real, some of them -- especially the really eye-popping ones -- are fake. This post, which will be updated over the next couple of days, is an effort to sort the real from the unreal. It's a photograph verification service, you might say, or a pictorial investigation bureau. If you see a picture that looks fishy, send it to me at alexis.madrigal[at]gmail.com. If you like this sort of thing, you should also visit istwitterwrong.tumblr.com, which is just cataloging the fakes.
Suicide more prevalent than homicide in US, but most Americans don't know it
In the United States, suicide is twice as common as homicide -- and more often involves firearms -- but public perception is just the opposite. News reports, movies and TV shows may contribute to the perception of a high risk of firearm homicide, authors of a new study say, leaving a substantial gap between ideas and reality and potentially leading to further danger. Now, first-of-its kind research, led by the University of Washington, Northeastern University and Harvard University, delves into public perceptions of gun violence and the leading causes of death in the U.S. The study, published Tuesday in the Annals of Internal Medicine, seeks to facilitate national public discussions about firearm ownership and storage.
