Horace Silver, a pianist, composer and band leader with a tireless inventiveness who influenced generations of jazzmen with his distinctive hard bop sound, has died. He was 85...

A mysterious Twitter account is trying to stop ISIS’s rise to power by spilling the terror group’s secrets online. For more than six months a series of tweets have detailed the alleged covert alliances and conspiratorial machinations behind the ascension of The Islamic State of Iraq and the Sham, the Islamist group taking over large parts of Iraq. Taken together, the tweets form a slanted but valuable picture of ISIS and one of the only portraits of its leaders. Perhaps even more important, the account is still active, sending out tweets days ago about ISIS’s current strategy in Iraq and what it plans to do next...

The Doonesbury creator talks with EmmyWrap about Robert Altman, Amazon's scary pilot process and finding the humor in Washington...

Having caught his first big break on radio 50 years ago, José Carlos Araújo, who had honed his sportscasting skills by calling button soccer games in a neighbor’s backyard, figured he would have to tame his changing voice to avoid losing his pitch halfway through the effusively long cries of “goooooool” that are the hallmark and necessity of a Brazilian play-by-play announcer’s routine...

ISIS's success in Mosul could have something to do with the Iraqi government putting a general accused of carrying out systematic torture in charge of the city's security...

The story of the British intelligence agent who rigged an election, installed a king loyal to the British, drew new borders -- and gave us today's ungovernable country...

It was a hundred years ago, a few months before the outbreak of World War I...

The same people who got us into this mess want America to "do something." Ignore them.

Here we go again. Whenever there’s a crisis anywhere in the world, you can count on America’s pundit class to demand action—usually of the military variety. Don’t just stand there, bomb something! After more than two decades of unchallenged American hegemony, Washington keyboards seem almost programmed to call for intervention halfway around the globe...

In the days leading up to the United States national team’s game against Ghana on Monday, not one American player said a word about the past.

No one talked about how Ghana had knocked the United States out of the past two World Cups, or how it had the psychological edge at this tournament. Not one sentence was spoken about the need for a victory in the team’s first game of this World Cup so the United States could finally break free from Ghana’s spell.

But, in the corners of the players’ minds, those thoughts simmered...

You are not to think you are anything special.
You are not to think you are as good as we are.
You are not to convince yourself that you are better than we are.
You are not to think you are more important than we are.
You are not to think you are good at anything.
You are not to think anyone cares about you.

These are six of the 10 commandments that make up the Law of Jante, a concept created by the Danish-Norwegian writer Aksel Sandemose in his 1933 novel, A Fugitive Crosses His Tracks...

As life returns to an uneasy version of normal in Mosul, the response from local residents to the city’s capture by ISIS, a radical Islamist group, has been surprisingly positive. Multiple Sunni residents inside Mosul who spoke with The Daily Beast by phone reported being glad to be rid of the predominantly Shia government security forces, and so far pleased with life under the ISIS occupation. That may change soon if ISIS begins to rule with the brutality they have displayed in Syria, but by keeping the residents of Mosul happy for now ISIS is buying time to increase its power and local support, which will make things even harder for the Baghdad government if it tries to take the city back...