Author: Elon Mark

In the United States, the affordability of eggs has prompted a national discussion — underscoring anxieties about the economy and the government’s role in addressing them. In Japan, there’s an equivalent: rice.Over the past year, Japan has grappled with a more than 200,000-ton shortage of its staple grain. Rice prices have skyrocketed, and supermarkets have been forced to restrict amounts that shoppers can buy. The situation became so dire that the government had to tap its emergency rice reserves.The twist is that even as Japan deals with shortages, the government is paying farmers to limit how much they grow. The…

If you subscribe to ArcadeNet, you can stream games. The basic free tier gives you a taster with 10 titles but limited play time and stream quality. For $20 a month, $80 for six months, or $120 for a year, you can unlock more than 80 games, but the only thing on the list that caught my eye was Ikari Warriors. You also need a decent internet connection to stream games, and there will likely be some lag.Customization and ExpansionThere are some basic customization options in the Legends Ultimate user interface, such as background colors for the menus and audio…

The dust from the devastating earthquake on Friday was still churning in Myanmar when an existential question swirled into the mix: Could this fatal clash of tectonic plates, which added yet another layer of trauma to a country already plagued by civil war, also portend the demise of Myanmar’s ruling junta?The earthquake, known to have killed at least 1,000 and probably many more than that, struck a day after Myanmar’s military regime celebrated the country’s 80th Armed Forces Day with a parade in Naypyidaw, the capital purpose-built by a previous group of generals.The sequence of events was hard to ignore.Omens…

Ziggy Duchnowski spent Saturday morning car shopping along Northern Boulevard in Queens with two goals in mind.He wanted to find a new small car for his wife, and he hoped to strike a deal before the new tariffs that President Trump is imposing on imported cars and trucks affect prices.“The word on the street is prices are going to shoot up now,” said Mr. Duchnowski, 45, a union carpenter who voted for Mr. Trump, holding the hands of his two small children.The tariffs — 25 percent on vehicles and parts produced outside the United States — will have a broad…

“This is a real Midwestern meal,” my father said, digging into a plate I’d prepared from the Martha Stewart–endorsed Dinnerly meal kit. “Meat. Potatoes. Green beans.”This, for my father, was high praise. It was the type of meal he’d grown up with as a child in Nebraska: hearty, no-nonsense, balanced, always something green, and always a slab of meat. For a week on a visit while my mother spent time with the grandkids, I cooked him dinners with Dinnerly, the lower-cost cousin of the truly excellent, cheffy Marley Spoon meal kit also endorsed by Stewart (and also by me: 8/10,…

A strong earthquake struck near Mandalay, Myanmar’s second-largest city, on Friday, damaging or collapsing bridges and buildings across a swath of Southeast Asia. More than 1,000 people were killed and more than 2,300 injured, Myanmar’s military government said Saturday. With the full extent of the disaster still emerging, those numbers are likely to rise.The 7.7-magnitude quake struck just before 1 p.m. local time, and a strong, 6.4-magnitude aftershock followed 11 minutes later. The shaking was felt in southern China and Vietnam and as far away as Bangkok, Thailand’s capital, where a tall building under construction collapsed, killing at least eight…

It is a cornerstone of American democracy, enshrined in the First Amendment of the Constitution: People have the right to challenge the actions of their leaders. Countless citizens, companies and others have exercised that right by filing lawsuits against the U.S. government.This has been happening for more than 200 years. But the barrage of at least 150 lawsuits against the second Trump administration, challenging many of its policies and personnel decisions, is perhaps unmatched in U.S. history. And in dozens of cases, judges have ordered the administration to pause or reverse actions at the heart of President Trump’s agenda.Mr. Trump…

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The City of Fort Worth, Texas, is ending its contract with Synagro, the Goldman Sachs-backed provider of fertilizer made from sewage sludge, over concerns that “forever chemicals” in the fertilizer are contaminating local farmland and groundwater.Fort Worth this month also sued several manufacturers of the chemicals, also called per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances or PFAS, alleging that they contaminated the city’s water supplies.The New York Times reported last year on a group of ranchers in Johnson County, just south of Fort Worth, who sued Synagro, blaming the fertilizer used on neighboring farmland for contaminating their crops and livestock.The sewage-sludge fertilizer came…

At a backyard barbecue in San Pedro, Argentina, last May, Rafael Flaiman spotted a friend wearing a light blue blazer that looked a little too snazzy for the occasion. He needled the guy a bit. What’s with the jacket? Mr. Flaiman asked.“La China pays,” the friend replied, with a triumphant smile.La China? Mr. Flaiman grew up in San Pedro, a struggling riverside town of 70,000, and for 16 years he’s been a reporter at La Opinión, the local newspaper. But he’d never heard of someone named La China — Spanish for the Chinese woman — and had no idea why…