Two weeks ago, National Football League commissioner Roger Goodell said he had gotten the Ray Rice decision wrong and rolled out new standards against domestic violence. Now, faced with a new video showing the running back cold-cocking his fiancée in an Atlantic City elevator, some analysts say, it’s a chance for Goodell to make good […]

The day Debra Wolverton was laid off from her retail sales job in June 2013, she stopped by some businesses on her way home in Austin, Texas, to ask for work. She was told to apply online. She did, countless times for countless job openings. She seldom got a response. Today, Wolverton, 48, is still […]

Within six months, there could be as many as 20,000 Ebola cases, the World Health Organization estimated last week. The BBC reported Friday that more than 2,000 people of 3,044 known cases in West Africa have already died in the current outbreak. The WHO is just one of the government agencies and groups around the […]

The Islamic State has recruiters all over the Western world seeking out new members though social media or known jihadi supporters in Canada, Britain, the U.S. and other largely non-Muslim nations. The militant group’s sophisticated media center is a vital part of spreading their message: Join us or die. But getting the word out is […]

By the end of August, more than 1,800 people had already died during the Ebola epidemic in West Africa, and the total number of infections was more than twice that amount. So what will September hold? Alessandro Vespignani has looked at the outbreak and studied the response on the ground. The Northeastern University physicist has […]

What is The Simpsons? It’s a television show, certainly—specifically, the longest-running American sitcom of all time. It’s a cultural touchstone. It’s a delight. But it’s also an archival collection—25 years’ worth of characters, themes, stories, and scripts. To celebrate the show’s quarter-century of existence, fans are being treated to projects that capitalize on this documentary […]

Bruce Levenson’s decision to sell the Atlanta Hawks, the second basketball franchise this year to change ownership in the wake of an owner’s racist comments, may lead to wider discussion of America’s racial inequality, according to the head of a sports sociology organization. Levenson announced yesterday that he will sell his controlling interest in the […]

A forthcoming paper from Northeastern University’s Max Abrahms and the University of Michigan’s Philip Potter reports that leadership decapitation may increase civilian casualties. Militant groups in the Afghanistan-Pakistan region, Abrahms and Potter discovered, became “significantly less discriminate in their targeting choices”—in other words, more likely to target civilians—after high-level militants were killed in drone strikes. […]

The state unemployment rate, 5.6 percent, is near the six-year low as the state has added nearly 70,000 jobs over the past year, a pace not seen since the dot-com boom at the beginning of the century. Earlier this year, the state surpassed the all-time employment record reached just before the boom went bust in […]

For many sports fans, this week brings the long-awaited change in the seasons. The National Football League — the most popular of our sports pastimes — returns with a full schedule of games that actually count in the standings. While those with favorite clubs still in contention for baseball’s post-season linger on in their affection […]

For many, the only way to learn about ISIS is through the news, or through social media. It is not often we hear honest accounts of why people join terrorist organizations, Max Abrahms, an expert on terrorism from Northeastern University, said. “If you ask terrorists why they joined an organization after they have been in […]

September 1974 marked the start of a new school year unlike any that Boston had ever seen. It was the beginning of court-ordered school desegregation and Boston was catapulted into a state of turmoil. Forty years later, we are still feeling the reverberations. In the summer of 1974, District Court Judge Arthur W. Garrity ruled […]