T.J. Raphael

Are you a newsie? Do you know what's happening from Washington to Hollywood to Pyongyang? Be smarter than your pals. Prep your dinner party factoids. Gauge your knowledge about what h...

More than 1,000 migrant children have been shipped to a Nogales, Arizona holding center, and state officials are less than pleased with the scarlet "I" the center is casting on their border town.

Diplomats, policy experts, and advisors have all weighed in on the unraveling of Iraq, but if there's anyone who has most acutely felt the anguish of the collapse of democracy in Iraq...

The Republican controlled House of Representatives took a surprising step to curb the federal government's power by voting to defund two key NSA programs. But the bill still has to pass the Senate.

As the Iraqi Ambassador to the United States, Lukman Faily is a man in a very difficult position right now. Here, Ambassador Faily answers some tough questions about whether his government can survive.

We're in close proximity to a raging drug war, yet most of us couldn't be more removed from the realities occurring just over the border.

Up until yesterday, as far as anyone knew, 89-year-old Johann Breyer was just a retired tool worker from the former nation of Czechoslovakia. Today he stands accused of being an armed...

Driven away from their communities by poverty and violence, there has been an influx of undocumented children coming to the U.S. from Central America. They’re crossing the U.S.–Mexica...

For many African Americans, Juneteenth has become the most celebrated day in American history. It is both a celebration of our victories, and a reminder of how much more there still i...

Should Iraq continue to matter to America? For today's veterans, civilians, and soldiers, the answer has perhaps never been more important - or more urgent. 

"Cloud seeding," a decades-old method of pumping silver iodide overhead to encourage rainfall, is on the rise as rainfall declines. And scientists can finally say with confidence that it works.

 

Georgia prisoner Marcus Wellons, who was convicted in the 1989 rape and murder of a teenage girl, was the first prisoner put to death since the horribly botched execution in Oklahoma ...

The Obama Administration will set a new precedent with the trial of Ahmed Abu Khattala, the suspected leader of the attacks in Benghazi. Instead of trying him at Guantánamo Bay, a Was...

My enemy's enemy is my friend? It's a line that's pervaded discussions about the possibility of the U.S. and Iran teaming up to address a rapidly destabilizing Iraq. Hillary Mann Leve...

On Tuesday evening, a 1856 British Guiana One-Cent Magenta stamp crossed Sotheby's auction block and sold for a record-breaking $9.5 million, setting a new record for the most expensi...

Law-abiding gun owners say the current debate over the Second Amendment doesn't include their point of view. But legality and good intentions don't always prevent tragedy. 

Brandi Tysinger-Temple's husband was facing a layoff, so she started selling homemade customized kids clothes on the internet.

America's fingerprints are everywhere, and the U.S. is again facing questions about its responsibility to a country it invaded in 2003. But does the blame game help? What role, if any, should America take now?

Robert Asare-Akoto, a Ghanaian soccer fan living in New York City, offered The Takeaway a misguided prediction about the World Cup. He explained that Ghana was going to destroy Team U...

The situation in Iraq looks painfully familiar: a fragile democracy exploded by longtime ethnic rivalries. In the lead-up to the Iraq War, back in November 2002, journalist James Fall...