THE TYPICAL face of America’s opioid epidemic has long been that of a white man from a post-industrial town in the Appalachian mountains. White victims have accounted for 78% of the more than 500,000 opioid-overdose deaths since the late 1990s. In 2017 counties in Appalachia experienced rates 72% higher than the average for the rest of the country.
WHEN THE man who had paid Melissa Cook to bear three embryos, created from his sperm and the egg of an anonymous donor, informed her that he had run out of money and she would have to abort at least one, she refused.
EARLY LAST year Jordan’s security service uncovered a plot against the kingdom’s ruler, Abdullah, involving his half-brother, Saudi Arabia and some Bedouin tribes. William Burns, the CIA director and a former ambassador to Jordan, recognised the threat this represented to a crucial American ally.
THE CONSTITUTION directs the Senate to offer presidents “advice and consent” on their Supreme Court nominees. Alexander Hamilton imagined that inter-branch co-operation would be a “source of stability”. The Senate would put “an excellent check” on presidents and thwart the appointment of “unfit characters”.
RENUKA MAHARJAN is a dedicated woman. Over the past two years she has made a regular trip on public transport across three boroughs of New York City, requiring two changes and one hour in either direction, to reach The HopeLine, a food bank in the Bronx.
Two months later, the lovers embarked on an American theatre tour as Romeo and Juliet. Four months after that, having finalised divorces from their previous spouses, they were able to get married. That all happens within four pages of Stephen Galloway’s new joint biography. It must have seemed that the couple were leading the most charmed of lives.
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