When spellers win the Scripps National Spelling Bee, audiences always want to know their secret. Yet this question seems to be asked far more in recent years in response to an Indian-American winning streak.

South...

June kicks off the U.S. wedding season. Whether you love nuptials or hate them, an astounding trend is occuring: fewer couples are tying the knot.

The number of U.S. marriage ceremonies peaked in the early 1980s, when almost 2.5 million marriages were recorded each year....

Earlier this month, the Department of Labor outlined changes to the existing overtime exemptions.

As you are probably aware, some employees are exempt from being paid overtime, meaning their employers don’t have to pay them extra when they work over 40 hours in a week. The Fair Labor Standards Act outlines the criteria for this exemption.

Emplo...

Take America back from those who have stolen it. Protect America from those who want to destroy it. Restore the principles that these usurpers betrayed.

These are the messages that have defined the GOP presidential race. They have been used for the past eight years to justify obstruction of the Obama administration, and are now being used to paint...

Standing on a walkway at Yellowstone National Park, I admired the hues of orange, blue and yellow in the sand of the Grand Prismatic Spring. A small sign nearby read “bacterial mats.” Visitors to Yellowstone may have noticed similar...

On May 26, researchers at Walter Reed National Military Medical Centers reported that they had detected bacteria with a gene that makes it resistant to colistin, the antibiotic of last resort. The news has health officials and scientists deeply concerned because this is the first time that the gene, called MCR-1, has been identified in the United...

Colleges and universities are supposed to be places where freedom of expression flourishes. Sadly, that is not the case. At a recent debate on the Yale University campus, 66 percent of the attendees supported a proposition that “free speech is threatened.”

Places of higher learning...

For excavators – archaeologists, but also looters like the Islamic State, or ISIS – the opportunity for discovery in modern Iraq and Syria is dazzling.

The countries lie within the Fertile Crescent, a broad swath of land stretching from the eastern Mediterranean to the Zagros Mountains and the Persian Gulf that gave rise to some of the...

A record high number of men and women in jail are committing suicide in the United States. Most incidents do not get major attention and are only known to known to the families of the prisoners involved and the jail staff.

Occasionally, suicides get national attention. Last year the death of Sandra Bland in the Waller County Jail in Texas gained...

Editor’s note: This article is part of our collaboration with Point Taken, a new program from WGBH which next airs on Tuesday, May 31 on PBS and online at pbs.org. The show features fact-based debate on major issues of the day, without the shouting.

It seems that almost everyone has an opinion about prostitution and sex work.