Islamic State Group Nearly Pushed Out Of Syria's Kobani - New York Times

Up until last week, I mostly thought of Bondi Junction as a place to wait for a bus. As the closest train-station hub to Bondi Beach and Sydney’s fancy eastern suburbs, it’s where I and other commuters would switch to buses to get our fix of beaches and high-end real estate.

Fashion designers and their muses, art enthusiasts, and some of the world’s most influential celebrities will all gather at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York City in three weeks for fashion’s biggest night: the Met Gala. The exclusive annual soirée is the primary source of funding for the museum’s Costume Institute, which is home to nearly 33,000 fashion objects from the past seven centuries.

House Speaker Mike Johnson’s grip on his fractious conference appears to be slipping after he unveiled a plan to bring separate bills funding aid for Ukraine, Israel, and Taiwan to the House floor—a move that has angered some far-right House Republicans. Johnson’s risky plan led a second Republican to call for his resignation on Tuesday.

Imagine a world where everything from plastics to concrete is produced from biomass. Personalized cell and gene therapies prevent pandemics and treat previously incurable genetic diseases. Meat is lab-grown; enhanced nutrient grains are climate-resistant. This is what the future could look like in the years ahead. The next big game-changing revolution is in biology.

This article is part of The D. C. Brief, TIME’s politics newsletter. Sign up here to get stories like this sent to your inbox. [time-brightcove not-tgx=”true”] More jurors were excused than asked to stick around for more questions on the first day of former President Donald Trump’s criminal hush-money trial. The second day found six out of the eighteen that will eventually be chosen, including alternates.

A Taylor Swift song is nothing without its bridge. The star’s strongest skills as a storyteller and lyricist are on full display in that critical moment, which marks a noticeable shift in the song, whether it’s in the narrative, tone, tempo, or a combination of the three. And for Swift, the bridge is often what elevates a good song to a truly great one.