Month: November 2019

If you actually watched former National Security Council official Fiona Hill’s testimony on Thursday, you heard a Russia expert decry Republicans’ embrace of Kremlin-propagated conspiracy theories. You also heard her explain why she was troubled to observe Rudy Giuliani and Gordon Sondland undermine the normal course of US foreign policy in Ukraine in pursuit of a “domestic political errand” for President Donald Trump — namely, leveraging the government there to do political favors for him.

But if you simply tuned in to Trump’s favorite Fox News host on Thursday night to learn about the hearing, you didn’t …

It’s been over 20 years since the first Pokémon games arrived, and kids who grew up with those games — and are now adults — remain fans today. But unlike similar kid-friendly franchises like Star Wars, which has attempted to age alongside its audience, Pokémon is still designed primarily with kids in mind.

That kids-first mentality hasn’t kept adult fans from sticking with Pokémon games, as evidenced by the massive, across-all-ages popularity of Pokémon Go, the mobile phone phenomenon that had people wandering the streets chasing virtual critters in 2016. But it is harder for grown ups to find …

NEW YORK — When Alexis was about 18 years old, she started having mysterious health problems. Her head hurt, her skin broke out. She had trouble with her vision.

Doctors couldn’t figure out what was wrong, and many didn’t take her seriously. Some said her symptoms were all in her head — but not the doctors and nurses at Public Health Solutions.

“This was the only doctor’s office that wasn’t calling me crazy,” she said.

Located in an aging brick building in Brooklyn’s Fort Greene neighborhood, PHS is a family planning clinic specializing in reproductive health care. Alexis first started …

Barack Obama exhorted some of Silicon Valley’s wealthiest Democratic donors to “chill” in their debate over the party’s candidates, seeking to ease the tensions among tech billionaires who have broken into separate camps backing Pete Buttigieg, Joe Biden, and — most surprisingly — Elizabeth Warren.

And even if the eventual nominee is not “your perfect candidate,” Obama said, “I don’t care.”

At a high-dollar fundraiser on Thursday nestled across the street from hiking trails winding through the Los Altos Hills in California, the former US president downplayed 2020 candidates’ differences as merely disagreements over “tactics” — even as …

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The blackouts that never came

• A portion of the areas Pacific Gas and Electric Company scheduled for a wildfire-prevention blackout never had the lights go out on Wednesday. [San Francisco Chronicle / Carolyn Said]
• In a fourth round of blackouts scheduled by PG&E, only around 48,000 customers of the notified 300,000 were without power beginning Wednesday morning. The majority of the

You wouldn’t be the first person to roll your eyes if told that a Silicon Valley startup that uses robots to make pizza is worth almost $2 billion.

Nor would you be the first person to question aloud how that same startup, a year later, could soon double in valuation.

But indeed, Recode has learned that this startup, Zume Inc., is in talks with investors to be valued at about $4 billion in a new round of fundraising, according to people familiar with the matter. One part of the story that isn’t so surprising: One of Zume’s biggest investors is …

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has been indicted on charges relating to corruption and bribery on Thursday, according to multiple reports in the Israeli and international press.

The official announcement will come from Avichai Mandelblit, Israel’s attorney general, on Thursday afternoon. The charges are serious, relating to three cases of financial and political misconduct, and carry the possibility of jail time. This is not an idle threat: Former Prime Minister Ehud Olmert got caught in a bribery scandal during his time in office in the late 2000s, and eventually served over a year in prison.

This indictment had …

The introverts of the world recently rallied around a viral photo on Twitter of a Europe-based Sephora store. The photo was of two shopping basket options: a red basket to convey the customer needs assistance or a black one to show that they’re fine being left alone.

The replies were flooded with shoppers who thought the baskets were an ingenious customer service idea and the solution to awkward encounters with salespeople. “I hope this person is the CEO now,” one Twitter user said. Others tagged companies like Lush Cosmetics and Victoria’s Secret, which they felt had trained employees to …

In a marked contrast from several past debates, gender equity took center stage at Wednesday’s Democratic debate, which featured wide-ranging discussion about paid family leave, abortion rights, and the higher standards that women candidates must meet.

Though Democrats’ 2020 presidential field is one of the most diverse in history, addressing gender disparities hasn’t always been a major focus on the debate stage, as Vox’s Anna North has written. Previous debates have barely glanced over subjects including equal pay. This week’s debate, only the third primary debate to ever feature an all-female panel of moderators, was different.

It kicked …