Opinion

Almanac for Aug. 21, 2026

Today is Friday, Aug. 21, the 233rd day of 2026. There are 132 days left in the year. Today in history: On Aug. 21, 1831, Nat Turner launched a violent slave rebellion in Virginia, resulting in the deaths of at least 55 white people; scores of Black people were killed in retribution after the rebellion, and Turner was later executed. Also on this date: In 1858, the first of seven debates took place between Illinois senatorial contenders Abraham Lincoln and Stephen Douglas. In 1911, Leonardo da Vinci's "Mona Lisa" was stolen from the Louvre Museum in Paris. (It was recovered two ...

AAA: Speeding becoming the norm carries dangerous risks

Feel like you're going too slow by following the speed limit when driving? Recent research shows you're not alone in that perception. Speeding has become so common that many drivers consider going 10 mph over the posted speed limit acceptable, while nearly half believe keeping up with traffic is safer than obeying the speed limit, according to the AAA Foundation for Traffic Safety. The findings suggest many drivers no longer define speeding by the posted speed limit alone, AAA states in a news release. Three in 10 drivers agreed with the statement, "No one actually drives the speed ...

A foreseeable and dire munitions crisis

During the 1979-1980 hostage crisis, a defiant Iran starkly demonstrated the limits of American power. Forty-five years later, it is doing the same thing, although in vastly different circumstances. Back then, when the post-Vietnam military was at a low ebb, we didn't strike Iran, and a ...

Almanac for Aug. 20, 2026

Today is Thursday, Aug. 20, the 232nd day of 2026. There are 133 days left in the year. Today in history: On Aug. 20, 1968, the Soviet Union and other Warsaw Pact nations invaded Czechoslovakia to crush the "Prague Spring" liberalization movement. Also on this date: In 1858, Charles Darwin's theory of evolution was first published in the "Journal of the Proceedings of the Linnean Society." In 1862, the New York Tribune published an open letter by editor Horace Greeley calling on President Abraham Lincoln to take more aggressive measures to free enslaved people and end the ...

Editorial cartoon for Aug. 20, 2026

US must exert real pressure for relief to come to Gaza

At the end of July, President Donald Trump announced that a "monumental" U.S.-backed deal had been struck on Gaza, securing the phased disarmament of Hamas in parallel with Israeli military withdrawal. Three days later it was reported that another 18 people had died in Israeli airstrikes. Not for the first time, it appeared that Mr. Trump's rhetoric had only a distant relationship with the reality it purported to describe. Such suspicions were duly confirmed. Under pressure from far-right members of his coalition, Israel's prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, explicitly rejected the ...