First Run News

Washington, D.C. on Wednesday was dominated by a series of explosive excerpts from a forthcoming book focused on the early days inside the Trump White House. Michael Wolff’s upcoming book, “Fire and Fury: Inside the Trump White House,” depicts a president who didn't expect to defeat were published Wednesday.  Wolff acknowledges in the book’s introduction that it contains conflicting and untrue statements.

Former Trump campaign chairman MORE in an attempt to kneecap the federal probe into alleged coordination between the campaign and Russia during the 2016 election.  In a court filing on Wednesday, lawyers for Manafort argue that the order establishing Mueller's investigation is overly broad and not permitted under Justice Department regulations.  Mueller should be ordered to stop investigating any of Manafort’s conduct that doesn’t relate to his time as campaign chair, the suit says, and the appointment itself should be declared invalid. “By ignoring the boundaries of

Senate negotiators say a lack of clarity from MORE about his plans for a proposed wall along the U.S.-Mexico border is holding up talks to avoid a government shutdown. Trump has demanded tougher immigration controls and more border-security measures in return for relief for Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) program recipients in the 2018 spending bill. But Republicans and Democrats working on a possible immigration deal said Wednesday they're still waiting to receive Trump's specific demands for tighter border security to hash out a deal. Republicans are n

MORE on Wednesday dissolved a controversial commission that was set up to investigate his unfounded claims of widespread voter fraud during the 2016 election. The White House said Trump decided to disband the Presidential Advisory Commission on Election Integrity because several states failed to hand over voter information. Press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders said in a statement that “rather than engage in endless legal battles at taxpayer expense,” Trump signed an executive order abolishing the panel and turning the matter over to the Department of Homeland Securi

MORE in dramatic fashion on Wednesday after his once close political ally offered explosive criticism of the president and his family in a new book. In a 267-word statement, an infuriated Trump accused his former chief White House strategist and top campaign aide of having “lost his mind” and of being “only in it for himself.” “Steve was rarely in a one-on-one meeting with me and only pretends to have had influence to fool a few people with no access and no clue, whom he helped write phony books,” Trump said. The break could prove perilous for Bannon, who is trying t

PAUL LEONG, A YOUNG banker who lives in downtown Manhattan, spends an unusual amount of time thinking about square watermelons. He wonders where to get them, how long they’ll last, when they’ll next be in season. This is because two years ago, Leong bought a work by the Los Angeles-based artist Max Hooper Schneider called ‘‘Genus Watermeloncholia’’: a bioengineered square watermelon in a glass case filled with water. The watermelon is connected to an LED sign that is positioned so that it appears to be transmitting the watermelon’s depressive thoughts: ‘‘This is all a mistake,’’ for instance.

For one evening early this month, the gravity of Manhattan’s auto marketplace shifted crosstown, from the dealerships on the northern reaches of 11th Avenue to the Upper East Side. While many of the same brands were offered — BMW, Jaguar, Mercedes-Benz and Porsche among them — the selling prices realized on the 10th floor of Sotheby’s New York auction house were on another scale entirely. So were the cars, for that matter.

Kenichi Yamamoto, who led the engineering team that produced a commercially viable rotary engine at the company now known as Mazda Motor Company and later became its president and chairman, died on Dec. 20 in Kanagawa Prefecture, near Tokyo. He was 95. His death was confirmed by Mazda, which was called Toyo Kogyo until 1984. Mr. Yamamoto, a slim and intense mechanical engineer, began his career working in a Toyo Kogyo factory after World War II, but he soon shifted to engine design, which accelerated his rise in management. Around 1961, Toyo Kogyo’s president asked Mr.

Many colleges ask you to choose a major as early as your senior year of high school, on your admissions application. Yet there’s a good chance you’ll change your mind. The Education Department says that about 30 percent of students switch majors at least once. Students get plenty of advice about picking a major. It turns out, though, that most of it is from family and friends, according to a September Gallup survey.

There’s no magic formula for getting into a selective college, but over a decade covering admissions for The Chronicle of Higher Education, I’ve picked up a thing or two. These takeaways, based on hundreds of interviews with admissions deans over the years, may help you navigate the process. When colleges choose applicants, they’re juggling competing goals, like increasing diversity and bringing in more revenue. Admissions officers aren’t looking for students who fit just one description — say, those who’ve earned all A’s or won the most awards.