Several years ago, Oxford professor and Shakespeare scholar Jonathan Bate decided to write a biography of the British Poet Laureate Ted Hughes. Initially it seemed he had the support of Hughes' widow, Carol Hughes – who had inherited copyright of her deceased husband’s writings, along with those of his more famous first wife, Sylvia...

The Super Bowl is not just the biggest and most-watched event of the year in the United States, it’s also one of the most important for advertisers, who shell out an estimated US$5 million for every half-minute of air time.

Indeed, the ads are almost as well watched as the game itself, offering companies spending an estimated $377 million...

Right in the middle of football’s biggest party week, there was more tragic news on the head injury front. Ken Stabler, the flamboyant Oakland Raiders quarterback who led his team to a Super Bowl victory in January 1977, was found to have had brain disease – chronic traumatic encephalopathy, or CTE – when he died of colon cancer...

Walmart is giving more than one million of its employees a raise later this month as part of a plan that will lift all but its newest hires to at least US$10 an hour.

The move, first announced last year, follows an aggressive campaign to get the largest...

In Manhattan Federal Court, there’s a trial taking place that has highlighted just how murky the business of art authentication has become.

After suddenly closing in 2011 in the wake of massive lawsuits, Knoedler Gallery and its former director, Ann Freedman, are finally having their day in court: they’re currently faced with a civil...

Consider this collection of headlines from national national media outlets over the past few weeks: “Allowing the mentally ill guns is insane,” or “Ranks of ISIS include mentally ill,” or “Jail last refuge for mentally ill” or “Lawyer says driver in crash was mentally ill.”

It seems the term...

Scientists are drawing a link between climate change and extreme weather events with increasing confidence.

An American Meteorological Society report, for example, studied 28 individual weather events occurring in 2013-2014...

On January 27, California Governor Jerry Brown proposed a voter initiative to reform sentencing in the state.

The initiative seeks to reintroduce parole hearings and early releases. If it passes, nonviolent felons will come up for parole once they complete the basic term for their original offense.

Brown’s initiative is advertised as a...

Researcher David Silver and colleagues designed a computer program capable of beating a top-level Go player – a marvelous technological feat and important threshold in the development of artificial intelligence, or AI. It stresses once...

You are wandering in the forest where you live, thinking about what you are going to have for dinner. Among the familiar calls of chickadees, you hear a foreign sound. You crouch in hiding, frightened for yourself and your family. Not until nightfall does the noise abate, allowing you to move again under the cloak of darkness. Soon you learn that...