America

The classic romantic author Francis Scott Key Fitzgerald was born on September 24, 1896 in St. Paul, Minnesota, US. Today, fans of the Jazz age writer celebrate his 124th birth anniversary. Author of the cult classic The Great Gatsby, Fitzgerald is known for his unique description of the 1920s, which is popularly known as the jazz age. Fitzgerald published 160 short stories in his career which spanned two decades.Here are some of the prominent works of the American author:1. This Side of Paradise, 1920: Fitzgerald’s debut…

PIGEON FORGE, Tenn.—Tom and Barb Hansen’s search for a retirement spot reads like the script to a road movie. California’s Lake Tahoe. Sedona and Scottsdale in Arizona. The Ozark Mountains of Missouri. Myrtle Beach, S.C.Over a decade or so, the couple traveled the country to imagine life after Mr. Hansen retired as president of a community bank in the suburbs west of Chicago. In 2018, the Hansens, ages 61 and 60, picked rural Sevier County, Tenn. A lot of other people had the…

This week, shareholders at Citigroup, Wells Fargo, Bank of America, and Goldman Sachs voted on resolutions recommending the companies stop any additional financing for fossil fuel projects. All the resolutions failed, pretty spectacularly, garnering just over 10 percent of the vote. Despite that failure, the votes were notable examples of a strategy climate activists are implementing with increasing boldness: pressuring institutions from the inside to make meaningful reforms on climate change. It’s one that showed…

Straddling the border between Brazil and Paraguay, Itaipu commenced electricity production in 1984. The technological upgrades being planned for the site are set to take 14 years.Tifonimages | Istock | Getty ImagesGE Renewable Energy has signed a deal that will see it carry out upgrades to the 14 gigawatt Itaipu hydropower plant, a vast facility straddling the border between Brazil and Paraguay.In a statement earlier this week, GE Renewable Energy said its Hydro and Grid Solutions businesses had signed a contract related…

New details of our past are coming to light, hiding in the nooks and crannies of the world, as we refine our techniques to go looking for them. Most lauded is the reconstruction of the evolution of humanity since our African origins around 300,000 years ago, by analyzing our living and fossil DNA.  Replete with the ghosts of African and Eurasian populations of the deep past, these have been resurrected only through the ability of science to reach into the world of the minuscule by studying biomolecules.Now, digital…

Paleontologists have discovered the largest raptor dinosaur ever found. The new species, known as Maip macrothorax, was a super predator of the megaraptor family that stalked the forests of Argentina some 70 million years ago.Raptors have become one of the most iconic dinosaurs, thanks largely to the Jurassic Park movies. Megaraptors, as you might expect, were much bigger, with most species ranging between 6 and 8 m (20 and 26 ft) long and standing a few feet taller than an adult human.They may not have been as large and…

MARCY, New York — From afar, the new Wolfspeed factory in upstate New York looks like any other large corporate office building, with an unassuming gray exterior and large glass windows. But hidden inside is a high-tech plant that’s almost entirely operated by a fleet of robots programmed to build semiconductors with a high level of precision. The scene is a far cry from the manual labor of the 20th-century Ford assembly line, and it just might be the future of American manufacturing, at least according to the…

According to a recent report from Electrify America, it delivered 1.45 million charging sessions to customers in 2021 – that’s over five times more than the 268,000 sessions recorded a year prior. The sessions represent estimations of millions of gallons of gasoline spared on US roads, as well as evidence of the benefits a transition to electric vehicles can provide. Electrify America currently operates one of the largest DC fast charging networks in the US, and simultaneously continues to grow its presence to…

Researchers have discovered a partially complete skull of new dinosaur species in Argentina that they say could be a close relative of an armless group of dinosaurs that roamed the southern hemisphere. They say the new species, called the Guemesia ochoai, offers new evidence of a unique ecosystem during the Late Cretaceous, more than 70 million years ago. Guemesia ochoai was a member of Abelisauridae, a clade of carnivores that roamed what is now Africa, South America, and India. The researchers have said that the newly…

Part of the Future of Work issue of The Highlight, our home for ambitious stories that explain our world. The first children arrive at 5 am. It’s still dark out, and they’re sleepy, but their mom has to get to New York for her shift in the emergency room. Katherine Lantigua gives each of the kids a bottle or a sippy cup, and then they nap until the others start to arrive, around 7. From there, it’s a whirlwind. Lantigua and her husband, Diogenes…