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Immigration and Customs Enforcement has identified more than 10,000 cases of potential fraud associated with a program that allows foreign students to extend their stay in the United States after graduating from college, ICE acting Director Todd Lyons told reporters Tuesday. At a press conference with officials from ICE and U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services, Lyons outlined some of the findings of an agency investigation into fraud associated with the Optional Practical Training program. OPT allows foreign nationals who enter the United States on a student visa to work in the U.S. for 12, or in some cases 24, months....

Paradise Lost is the first epic of English literature written in the classical style. John Milton saw himself as the intellectual heir of Homer, Virgil, and Dante, and sought to create a work of art which fully represented the most basic tenets of the Protestant faith. His work, which was dictated from memory and transcribed by his daughter, remains as one of the most powerful English poems. (Summary by Caeristhiona)

Another of his timeless hits entered the Hot 100 in May 1960.Sam Cooke made so many outstanding contributions to music history that it’s impossible to choose just one song that defines him. His smooth, lyrical and expressive voice adorned countless gems, from “You Send Me” to “Chain Gang,” “Only Sixteen” to “Cupid,” and of course the immortal “A Change Is Gonna Come.” Another of his all-time greats, “Wonderful World,” debuted on the Billboard Hot 100 on May 9, 1960. The song was written chiefly by A&M Records co-founder and hitmaker Herb Alpert with Lou Adler, but Cooke himself is credited...

New audiobook release: Mourt's Relation; or Journal of the plantation at Plymouth, by Edward Winslow Because American culture is important to celebrate and remember. In this instance, the first Thanksgiving. Mourt's Relation; or Journal of the plantation at PlymouthMourt's Relation is an account of the first year of the Plymouth Colony who arrived in Massachusetts, and is one of two books used as primary sources about the first Thanksgiving. The other is William Bradford's "Of Plimoth Plantation". - Summary by progressingamerica"Of Plimoth Plantation": Bradford's History of the Plymouth Settlement, 1608-1650

Death of a Salesman follows two days in the life of the Loman family, who live in Brooklyn and have, at long last, very nearly paid off their mortgage. But they have perhaps never felt more insecure. Bills are piling up. Willy’s job as a traveling salesman has stopped paying him a salary. In his 60s, he is beginning to feel his age, and as he works for scant commissions, he’s started to exhibit a faltering grasp on reality, and an increasingly vigorous drive toward self-destruction. His wife Linda — senses terrible possibilities just around the corner. Meanwhile, adult sons...

Archaeologists in Egypt recently uncovered a massive statue believed to depict King Ramses II, the pharoah believed to be a major character in the Old Testament. The statue was found at the Tel Pharaoh site in Husseiniya Center, Sharqia Governorate, the Egyptian Ministry of Tourism and Antiquities said on April 22. The site is in Egypt's Nile Delta, northeast of Cairo. Officials also described the statue as "remarkable" in size, weighing between 5 and 6 tons and measuring over 7 feet long. In a translated statement, the ministry described the statue as being in a "relatively poor condition of preservation,"...

It is not a book you need. It’s not anywhere near the top of your to-read list. But you have to buy it. You already know where you’ll put it: on top of the pile of books on your bedside table.

An example of Linear Elamite( Image Credit: Darafsh/Wikimedia/CC 3.0) An ancient Iranian mystery has finally been solved, according to a French archaeologist who reports successfully cracking the code to an enigmatic, undeciphered writing system. Known as Linear Elamite, the 4000-year-old script—once considered impossible to decode—has now been unlocked by François Desset, in an achievement that has drawn comparisons to Jean-François Champollion’s famous deciphering of the enigmatic Rosetta Stone. Desset, a 43-year-old archaeological researcher based at the University of Liege in Belgium, says the remarkable ancient script is the only truly “local” writing system from the country’s early history, which is...

This video has gone viral in the last day on Instagram, X, and TikTok. Reading ability (proficiency and literacy skills) among youth has declined in recent years, especially in the US, with scores hitting historic lows on national assessments. 👀📚 pic.twitter.com/CCMpWdx2Ls— Rain Drops Media (@Raindropsmedia1) April 29, 2026Like a ghostly silhouette, this video demonstrates the gauche condition of America's hollow education system and its extraordinary failure to teach children to read. Here's Google Gemini reminding us that "extraordinary" is an intermediate level word. It's not a five-dollar word. It's just a normal part of language. "She wore a silhouette of...

Sitting on bench seats in a retrofitted old hearse, stuck in quintessentially choked Los Angeles highway traffic, I listened to a woman narrate the macabre details of an 80-year-old murder. The guide, Blaze Lovejoy—whose business card identified her as a “dark storyteller” and “Manson specialist”—had already driven us through Hollywood. Now she was bringing us to downtown Los Angeles, the heart of this particular darkness. Lovejoy wore combat boots with flames across the toes and had a microphone headset on, her British accent giving the narration a Vincent Price vibe: “A Hollywood dream turned to a real-life nightmare, with a...

Mauricio Jimenez, 48, of Hialeah, was arrested Tuesday on charges of grand theft over $100,000 and organized fraud of $50,000 or more, Miami-Dade jail records showed. The manager of a Miami-Dade Home Depot store has been arrested in a years-long fraud scheme involving merchandise markdowns that cost the home improvement company millions, authorities said. Mauricio Jimenez, 48, of Hialeah, was arrested Tuesday on charges of grand theft over $100,000 and organized fraud of $50,000 or more, Miami-Dade jail records showed. According to an arrest report, Jimenez was the manager of the Home Depot at 7899 West Flagler Street and had...

Jean Raspail’s ‘The Camp of the Saints’ isn’t a racist screed, it’s a story about how civilizations die. In an act of censorship that liberals would normally decry as fascist and authoritarian, Amazon banned a new edition of The Camp of the Saints by the late French novelist Jean Raspail — and then quietly re-listed the book after online backlash to the company’s attempted censorship. The book, published by a small outfit called Vauban Books, was removed from Amazon’s U.S. site on Monday with almost no explanation. As of this writing, Amazon has not explained why it de-listed the...

We were newlyweds. We still walked around holding hands, even if we were just going to the store. I would say to him, "I love you." But I didn't know then how much. I had no idea… We lived in the dormitory of the fire station where he worked. There were three other young couples; we all shared a kitchen. On the ground floor they kept the trucks, the red fire trucks. That was his job. One night I heard a noise. I looked out the window. He saw me. "Close the window and go back to sleep. There's a...

Christopher Nolan made his way to Las Vegas to talk up “The Odyssey,” his historical drama based on Homer’s Greek epic... “Why ‘The Odyssey?’ ‘The Odyssey’ is a story that has fascinated generation after generation for 3,000 years,” Nolan mused. “It’s not a story. It’s the story.” Nolan treated exhibitors to an extended look at “The Odyssey,” which opened with Damon’s Odysseus, shirtless on the beach with a burly beard. He’s been gone a long time and admits to Calypso (Charlize Theron) that he “can’t remember anything before Troy.” Most of the footage revolved around “the story of the horse”...

The Newberry Library in Chicago is scouting transcribers to demystify its handwritten collection. As Dan Kelly wrote in yesterday’s Chicago, the archive’s hunt for “living Rosetta stones” first kicked off in 2013, when the Newberry launched a campaign to transcribe all its Civil War letters in time for the sesquicentennial. This was such a success that the project has since gained momentum, expanding into all corners of the collection’s vast archive. Volunteer crowdsourcing efforts began in earnest during the pandemic. Because, as Alison Hinderliter, the Newberry’s curator of modern manuscripts and archives has put it, “people were looking for something...

Ever since the unveiling of Bitcoin on Halloween 2008, the true inventor behind the revolutionary digital currency has been shrouded in mystery. Its creator adopted the mysterious pseudonym Satoshi Nakamoto, but no individual had so far been decisively identified as Satoshi, now undoubtedly one of the world’s richest people. But after an extensive investigation involving artificial intelligence and forensic linguistics experts, the New York Times has claimed to uncover the anonymous architect of Bitcoin, who has hidden his identity for 17 years. That man is Adam Back, a 55-year-old British computer scientist who the newspaper says pioneered the decentralised digital...

"Somebody stole something… and the number-one suspect is Black Snape?"Saturday Night Live is diving headfirst into the discourse surrounding one of Harry Potter's most controversial casting choices. During the sketch show's latest "Weekend Update" segment, Kam Patterson stepped into the role of Professor Snape — a nod to the upcoming HBO series casting a Black actor, Paapa Essiedu, to play the previously white character — and like many Potter fans and critics, SNL had some interesting observations to share about the decision. "Good evening, Mr. Jost," Patterson began, appearing as Snape and trying out a faux-British accent. Immediately dropping...

Yenny/El Ateneo, Argentina’s oldest and largest bookstore chain, publishes weekly charts of the top 10 bestselling books in their retail stores across the country. The Spanish edition of Letters for Life, a new book on the Lubavitcher Rebbe’s Torah-based advice for emotional wellbeing, surprised the country’s publishing wizards and emerged as #5 on the list. As a result, the book is now being sold in airports and malls across Argentina. The book’s popularity follows the increased interest in the Lubavitcher Rebbe caused by Argentina’s philo-Semite president Javier Milei. Milei has visited the Lubavitcher Rebbe’s Ohel several times on his trips...

Children in Finland start school at the age of seven. They are only in classrooms half the time as most other countries. Its students outperform most others across the world. Why is that?

A stubborn patient has refused to leave her Florida hospital room even though she was discharged by doctors five months ago, a lawsuit alleges. Charlotte Paynter has allegedly been unlawfully occupying Room 373 at Tallahassee Memorial Hospital since October, according to a civil lawsuit filed by the hospital on March 3. Paynter, 69, was admitted to the medical facility for treatment for an undisclosed condition last year, the hospital said in the complaint obtained by the Daily Mail. Doctors issued a formal discharge order on October 6 after it was determined that she no longer needed acute care services, the...