Author: Megan Burrows

She committed the entire thing to memory. She committed every word, sentence, and deliberate pause to memory so that she wouldn’t have to take her eyes off Bryan Kohberger’s face when she stood in the Ada County Courthouse in Boise on July 23, 2025. Never once. Alivea Goncalves had made the decision that her impact statement would not be a grieving act. It was going to be something different. A blinkless, up-close confrontation. “Lurking in the shadows made you feel powerful because no one ever paid you any attention in the light.” When that sentence was delivered, the courtroom erupted…

Kieran Hutcheon was attempting to grab coffee with his mother. That was the entire strategy. A garden center, a hot beverage, a little bit of everyday life at a time when it had become extremely difficult to access. The 62-year-old Larraine Hutcheon never survived her cancer. They turned around because she felt sick on the way. Her son, a paramedic, has been reflecting on that incomplete journey ever since she passed away in 2017. Hutcheon has taken action with that memory nine years later. He founded Wish Ambulance Scotland with fellow Aberdeen paramedics Karen Gill and Daniel Bickmore. The charity…

Athens’ Kypseli neighborhood is not a peaceful area. It is located in the densely populated, graffiti-covered center of the city, where waves of gentrification and decay have coexisted side by side. Airbnbs now occupy buildings that share walls with deserted lots, and long-term foreign residents and tourists move alongside those who have nowhere to go. On July 18, a homeless man made the discovery that would spark a two-week investigation involving police forces from two continents in one of those deserted areas—a derelict former parking lot littered with trash. Elisabeth-Jane Ross, a 38-year-old Scottish charity worker from Edinburgh, had been…

The British inheritance tax system has a unique cruelty that is rarely addressed in an open manner. Families must pay the tax within six months of a person’s passing, often before probate is even granted, before the estate is fully administered, and occasionally before the house has been sold or the accounts have been properly settled. The funds must reach HMRC on schedule. The wait for a refund can then take months if it turns out that an excessive amount was paid. For Albert Temperton, it was more than two years. After his father passed away and the estate’s inheritance…

Blackheath’s grass has turned straw in color. Where people typically lay picnic blankets in Green Park, the ground is hard and cracked. Aerial photos of central London taken in late July reveal a landscape that doesn’t quite resemble England: the parks are like patches of bare earth between the roads, and the area is pale and scorched. Although it’s not particularly dramatic, the image is unique. This is not how Britain should look. In 190 years of records, July 2026 was the driest in England and Wales. Over the course of the month, England received 6.5 mm of rain, which…

The timing was intentional. Following the conclusion of the 2026 World Cup, Sarah Sackman, the MP for Finchley and Golders Green and Labour’s Minister for Courts and Legal Services, wrote an article for the Barnet Post urging the local council to remove the Union Jacks and St George’s Crosses that had been affixed to public lampposts throughout her constituency. She had a clear narrative hook thanks to the World Cup: the competition is over, the flags’ sporting justification is no longer valid, so let them come down. The speed and scope of the response was what she might not have…

A version of this story begins with a meme about needing money for a Porsche. Earlier this year, Andrew Fedyk, one half of the Canadian electronic duo Loud Luxury, found himself standing on a Miami sidewalk with his then-fiancée, fashion TikToker Madeleine White, after a restaurant doorman turned him away for wearing a graphic t-shirt that referenced a Brad Pitt joke. White filmed the entire event and shared it with her nearly five million followers. Within hours, it had taken on its own life. The irony was obvious to anyone who knew who Fedyk was. The shirt’s message, a mock-humble…

There is something almost absurd about the scene at the center of this case: a person standing in their kitchen, blender whirring, scooping vanilla-flavored powder into a morning shake because they are trying to be healthier. A federal lawsuit has been filed against one of the most reputable names in retail over this routine, which is carried out millions of times in American homes. Seven consumers filed a proposed class action against Costco on July 7 in the U.S. District Court for the Western District of Washington, alleging that Orgain Organic Protein Powder sold through the warehouse chain contains lead,…

On paper, Redis is having a very good year. This spring, the database company surpassed $300 million in yearly recurring revenue, capitalizing on a surge in demand for the infrastructure necessary to support AI systems. Twelve thousand clients have made payments. The client list includes one-third of the Fortune 100. However, about 75 employees at its Tel Aviv development center are finding out they are unemployed this week. About 25% of the company’s 300 Israeli employees have been laid off, which is a startling figure for a business that was just a few weeks ago celebrating a revenue milestone. Ofer…

With “The Chosen,” a series financed by thousands of common Christians who purchased shares for as little as $1, Dallas Jenkins has spent almost ten years narrating the story of Jesus. Some of those same believers now claim they were forced out of the very thing they created as the show gets closer to its final seasons. According to Jenkins, the charge is “categorically false.” Christopher Garabedian, a former biopharma executive who invested $300,000 in 5&2 Studios’ predecessor back in 2019, filed the lawsuit last month in the Delaware Court of Chancery. According to his own account, he anticipated holding…