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I come to bury the post-Cold War world order, not to praise it. In retrospect it is clear that the basic mantra of the era, “global trade will fix everything,” brought us to the calamities we face today. Abandoning self sufficiency was always going to decrease American power. That was the point. The other side of the ledger was supposed to be global liberalization and democratization. On that front we have had mixed results, at best....

The mocked-up correspondence dated November 8, which begins “Dear President-Elect Biden” and is addressed to him under the same title, tells Biden and Harris they are president and vice-president elect for the purposes of the Presidential Transition Act of 1963. However, such a message has not been sent by the GSA, which has not yet made such a call as that outlined in the fake letter shared on social media....

Officials in Bielefeld, about 100 miles from Hanover, have put up a million Euro bounty to address a long-running joke that the burg, which has no no major landmarks or geographical features, actually doesn’t exist. It all started back in 1993 when college student Achim Held was on the Usenet group de.talk.bizarre, writing about meeting someone from Bielefeld. A surprised Held reportedly told the man, “Das gibt’s doch gar nicht,” which colloquially translates to “there’s nothing there,” but literally means “that doesn’t exist....

But when an old manuscript turned up in Cairo, it contained the latitude and longitude of one of Stromer’s quarries. Smith and his colleagues were off. Having entered the wrong GPS coordinates, Smith quickly got lost in the desert southwest of Cairo. He stuck his head out his Toyota Land Cruiser to get oriented–and spotted one humongous bone. It turned out to belong to a titanosaur, a long-necked quadrupedal plant eater that lived during the Cretaceous period....

The pillow is named the Turn A Cushion because it’s shaped like a giant A that players wear around their waists. The pillow is designed so that players can rest their elbows on each side of it, allowing for a more comfortable, supportive gaming experience. There’s even a smartphone mount attached to an articulated arm, which is perfect for players who want to spend some quality time with the new Call of Duty Mobile maps without putting stress on their triceps....

Bill Bradley without basketball is like John Glenn without space, or Ike without war. In a former life, first at Princeton and then with the New York Knicks, Bradley was that rare athlete who achieved a kind of larger mythology. He was Jimmy Stewart in satin shorts: the small-town son of a banker, self-effacing and studious, clean-cut and Christian, dazzling on the court but so gifted away from it that he put off the pros for Oxford....

Through the years, the one area that Nintendo has arguably been the most creative in is hardware. The revolutionary motion controls of the Wii and the current wave of success with the Switch are just a taste of the company’s hardware successes, but not all experiments have been received so well. There have been times in Nintendo’s history where its attempts to innovate didn’t exactly go as planned, due to a fundamental flaw or lack of fan support....

JOZSEF KUN PECS, HUNGARY

But they’re growing. Common Law courts have sprung up in at least 11 states in the farm belt and the West over the last year, organized by a cross section of people bent on directly challenging government. In living rooms, bingo halls and convention centers, dozens gather weekly to form juries, present evidence and issue kangaroo-court indictments, liens, arrest warrants-and even death sentences. None of this has the force of law....

A Certified Important Book you haven’t read: George Eliot’s “Middlemarch,” which is a source of shame. I know it’s superb, but I have always been daunted by this masterpiece. The book I most want my kids to read: “The Tower” by W. B. Yeats. They would learn, or at least glimpse, how magnificent poetry can be.

Set in the coastal fishing village of Sanavere, south of Miami, “Familiar Heat” centers around Faye Parry Rios, a young woman cursed with bad luck and blessed with gumption. Kidnapped and raped by bank robbers, then abandoned by her husband, Faye soon loses her entire personality to brain damage in a near-fatal car wreck. Her recovery is heartening but never sentimental–she is good but never too good to be true–because Hood has no use for movie-of-the-week heroics....

In her new book “The Far-Farers: A Journey From Viking Iceland to Crusader Jerusalem,” former British journalist Victoria Clark draws thoughtful and subtle parallels between the beginning of the first millennium and the second. This account, an engaging blend of journalism and history, shows how the 11th century’s militant Christianity laid the groundwork for the later separation of church and state in Western Europe. It also shows how the crusaders’ anti-Semitism and demonization of Islam still haunt us today....

Without treatment, even prevention proves to be impossible. Effective prevention requires that individuals submit to testing for HIV, the virus that causes AIDS, and then to counseling and behavioral change if they are infected. But when treatment is not available, individuals shun testing. To be found HIV-positive is not a gateway to treatment, but a mark of certain death and therefore social and economic exclusion. It is estimated that perhaps only 5 percent of the 25 million or so in Africa who are currently HIV-positive even know that they are infected, and fewer than one in a thousand receive anti-retroviral treatment....

He’s bad. He’s batty. And (aieee!) he’s back. As a matter of fact, his decision to come back may be the most convincing proof of his battiness. Now that we’ve driven a stake through the greed-is-good ’80s, who wants another rich bloodsucker? Then again, no properly raised vampire would continue to lie low when so many pine so ardently for his return. Just listen to Helen Samaras, a 37-year-old travel agent in West Hempstead, N....

The message finally penetrated. After three days of fidgeting, the Peruvian government’s National Electoral Process Office (ONPE)–hardly regarded as a model of independence–announced that Fujimori, with 49.84 percent of the votes counted so far, could not achieve the full majority needed for a first-round victory. Now he’s bracing for a runoff contest, to be held in late May or early June, against his leading challenger, a former shoeshine boy named Alejandro Toledo who drew 40....

Before my journey with Ruth’s Chris, I spent time working in various culinary positions in Puerto Rico before finding my place within the company. My career at Ruth’s Chris began back on May 1, 1994 in San Juan where I started out as a dishwasher, and even though I wasn’t cooking just yet, I was immediately motivated to excel in this exciting industry. I was motivated from the very beginning to work hard, succeed, and take care of my family and my young son....