To be a hit, a gift doesn't have to be meaningful or extremely personal; some of the greatest gifts our staff has ever given or received are silly but joyful trinkets and games. I never thought to ask for some of my favorite and most treasured gifts. I've compiled a list of the top impractical presents that will make your holiday gift recipients happy. They might not be the main attraction or what you had originally intended to get, but I can assure you that your friends and family will love them. Remember that depending on where you shop from, shipping deadlines may have already gone or are rapidly coming, so make sure to check to make sure your present will reach on time. We have a selection of last-minute gifts that ship fast if you need a gift that will arrive on schedule. GO Ahead and...

Austin Rivers, like many others who took up knitting as a new pastime during the pandemic, found solace in it. However, when he discovered that his hats and scarves could also benefit his queer community in New York City, his craft took on a greater significance. Up to 40% of the nation's homeless youth are LGBTQ youth, therefore he was especially keen to assist them. "I can knit, but I don't have the ability to build a shelter or the network or connections to help in that way," Rivers remarked. I also made the decision to start knitting and start this nonprofit since I knew how cold New York City is. 550 knitters across the country support Knit the Rainbow, which was established in April 2020, by donating their handmade clothing to Rivers and his staff. Through neighborhood NGOs in New Y...

Even in a country that has grown numb to the horror of school massacres, Monday's shooting death of a student and a teacher at a private Christian school in Wisconsin was shocking. Surprisingly, Natalie Rupnow, the culprit who allegedly committed suicide during the outburst, was a girl and only 15 years old. The number of mass shootings committed by women is quite low. According to an NBC News examination of Gun Violence Archive data, less than 60 of the more than 2,000 mass shootings since 2013 in which the gender of the offender was known involved female attackers. According to the nonprofit organization that monitors gun violence, the Gun Violence Archive, a mass shooting occurs when four or more persons are shot in a single occurrence, excluding the gunman. Although active shooter inci...

Authorities said that a teenager who attended Abundant Life Christian School opened fire on Monday, killing a teacher and a pupil at a private school in Wisconsin. Madison Police Chief Shon Barnes told reporters that the accused gunman, a female student, was dead and six people were injured. What we know about the shooting is as follows: When did the shooting happen? At 10:57 a.m., authorities were called to Abundant Life Christian School, which is located east of Madison's downtown, in response to a report of an active shooter, according to Barnes. At a press conference on Tuesday, he stated that the 911 call was placed by a second-grade teacher. Barnes had misreported on Monday that the call was placed by a second-grader. It was an error. I'm sorry, and I'll make it clear today. ...

According to a leading international war crimes prosecutor, mass graves discovered in Syria in the days following President Bashar al-Assad was deposed are providing proof of some of the biggest atrocities since the Nazis. After touring two mass burial sites in the towns of Qutayfah and Najha near Damascus, former U.S. war crimes ambassador at large Stephen Rapp told Reuters on Tuesday that the state-run machinery of death tortured and executed over 100,000 people. Rapp, who oversaw prosecutions at the war crimes tribunals in Rwanda and Sierra Leone and is currently assisting with the documentation of evidence of war crimes in Syria, stated, "Given what we've seen in these mass graves, I don't have much doubt about those kinds of numbers." A request for comment from Rapp, who also talked t...

The State Department is being sued by Palestinian families for supporting Israel's military campaign in Gaza, which has resulted in a humanitarian crisis in the confined territory and killed tens of thousands of people. Plaintiffs from Gaza, the occupied West Bank, and the United States filed a lawsuit in the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia on Tuesday, accusing Washington of making exceptions for its close ally Israel in order to get around the 1997 Leahy law, which forbids foreign military aid in cases where there is proof of human rights violations. In a statement released by the legal nonprofit Democracy for the Arab World Now, or DAWN, which assisted in bringing the lawsuit, one of the plaintiffs, Ahmed Moor, a Palestinian American, said, "My surviving family members i...

Before sunrise on Wednesday, Indiana carried out its first execution since 2009, with a large portion of the procedure being kept secret from the public. No media representatives will be permitted to witness the execution of Joseph Corcoran, 49, who was executed by lethal injection for the 1997 murders of his brother and three other men, including Corcoran's sister's fiancé, according to state law. After a federal appeals court on Monday concurred with a federal judge who found the convicted man competent to be executed, his legal team proceeded to petition the federal courts, including the U.S. Supreme Court, on Tuesday to stop the execution. According to a statement from the Indiana Department of Correction, Corcoran was declared dead at 12:44 a.m. CT, and the execution procedure started...