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Jennifer Wolff, the Life Skills Coordinator for the Cleveland Indians, was fixing up some things around her home on Friday morning. Suddenly, her “Women In Baseball” group chat—which includes 80 women working inside the game—started buzzing. News had broken that Kim Ng, a longtime baseball front office executive, was finally hired to run a team: the Miami Marlins made her the first woman team general manager in the history of a major North American men’s sports league. She felt elation, tinged with some frustration. “I was so incredibly excited and proud of Kim,” says Wolff, who worked under Ng (pronounced “ANG”) in the MLB front office in the early 2010s. “But then I also kind of thought, it’s about time.” Wolff laughs, a clear acknowledgment of both her happiness about the hire, and the ridiculous nature of the wait. “This is so well deserved,” she says. “But it should have happened years ago.” Ng, who will also become baseball’s first first Asian-American general man...

Bunkueanun ‘Francis’ Paothong, a 21-year-old bespectacled university student, is one of three protesters recently arrested under the rarely invoked section 110 of Thailand’s criminal code. The charge of violence against the queen carries a maximum sentence of life imprisonment, or, if the queen’s life is perceived to have been endangered, the death penalty can be applied. The protesters were attending an Oct. 14 rally when Queen Suthida’s motorcade drove by. Francis and another protester, Ekachai Hongkangwan, were arrested on Oct. 16, while child welfare activist Suranat Paenprasert was arrested the following week. This is Francis’ account of how he wound up facing the harshest penalty levied against a demonstrator since this round of rallies against the Thai government and monarchy began in June. What follows has been edited for length and clarity. You can say that my household is conservative in its nature. Initially, I was pretty much a conservative too. I began to...

LONDON — The United Kingdom on Wednesday became the fifth country in the world to record more than 50,000 coronavirus-related deaths, a level that one of the nation’s leading doctors says “should never have been reached.” Figures from the British government showed that 595 more people in the country died within 28 days of testing positive for the virus, the highest daily number since May. The figure took the U.K.’s total death toll from the pandemic to 50,365. The U.K, which has the highest virus-related death toll in Europe, joins the United States, Brazil, India and Mexico in reporting more than 50,000, according to a tally maintained by Johns Hopkins University. The U.K.’s overall death toll is widely considered to be far higher than that as the total reported only includes those who have tested positive for the virus and doesn’t include those who died of COVID-related symptoms after 28 days. Like other nations in Europe, the U.K. is experiencing a resurgence of the ...

BRUSSELS (AP) — The European Union on Wednesday said it looked forward to better relations with the United States under the leadership of President-elect Joe Biden, and expressed hope the presidential transition will not be “bumpy.” EU foreign affairs chief Josep Borrell warmly congratulated “Biden and Vice President-elect Kamala Harris for their historic victory” and said the 27-nation bloc looked forward to better relations than under President Donald Trump. “It is not a secret, (either), that in the past 4 years things have become complicated,” Borrell told legislators at the European Parliament. Both sides, despite being longstanding allies, disagreed over key topics from trade and security to the fight against climate change. The EU is expected to invite Biden soon to videoconference talks in an attempt to give new impetus to the trans-Atlantic alliance. “You can rest assured that we are ready to engage fast with the new administration,” Borrell said. But he also all...

President Donald Trump has made few public appearances since falsely declaring he won the election several hours after the polls closed. Behind the scenes, Trump has been shoring up Republican support for his refusal to concede and doubling down on launching dubious legal challenges to the results . He’s employed government bodies to bolster the effort, and is raising money to build a new war chest that would let him direct funds to Republicans he wants to support going forward. A person who speaks to Trump frequently said he believes Trump’s fight, as disruptive as it is, is a way for him to posture for what comes next. If Trump doesn’t prevail in his legal challenges and leaves office, as many aides are anticipating, Trump can use a new leadership political action committee (leadership PAC) to fund candidates of his choosing and potentially pay for political travel and events he might want to do after leaving office—or launch a 2024 presidential campaign, says the person c...

They TikToked , they led marches and they stepped up as poll workers in their communities. Now, they’ve helped tap the next President of the United States. After a contentious race, former Vice President Joe Biden is headed to the White House with the most votes cast for any presidential candidate in American history — and he’s got millions of young Black, Latino and Asian voters to thank for that distinction. Not only was youth voter turnout in this election the highest in over 100 years, youth of color backed Biden in several battleground states including Pennsylvania, Michigan and Arizona, according to new analysis of voting data. Tufts University’s Center for Information and Research on Civic Learning & Engagement (CIRCLE), which researches youth civic engagement in the U.S., analyzed the young electorate’s role in this election and found that 73-87% of Black, Asian and Latino voters between age 18 and 29 voted for Biden, compared to the 45-51% support from you...

President-elect Joe Biden said Tuesday that he and his team would move steadily ahead with their transition plans, regardless of whether President Donald Trump concedes or he provides the resources traditionally offered to incoming administrations to assist in a transition. “We’re well underway,” Biden said as he took questions from reporters after delivering remarks about the Affordable Care Act lawsuit. The Trump Administration’s failure to recognize the outcome “does not change the dynamic of what we’re able to do,” he said.”We’re going to be moving along in a consistent manner putting together our administration, our White House, reviewing who we’re going to pick for Cabinet positions, and nothing’s going to stop it.” The transition is moving steadily ahead even though Biden has not yet been afforded any of the privileges typically offered to a President elect, such as office space in Washington and intelligence briefings. It helps that Biden, as a former Vice Preside...

As we drove slowly through the crowded D.C. streets just blocks from the White House, we popped out of our sunroofs to exclaim in relieved jubilation. Lyrics like Lizzo’s “feelin’ Good as hell” formed our soundtrack. After several days, after the pins and needles on which America sat had grown more and more painful, the Associated Press had proclaimed Joe Biden and Kamala Harris the winners. Our exhaustion could have relief, even if only briefly. Many of us in the activism, organizing, academic and grassroots communities have warned of the danger of Donald Trump’s narcissistic, white-nationalist tantrums since 2016. More days of those hissy fits, enabled by slow counts and slower projections, felt like the twisting of a knife we were finally on the cusp of pulling out. In our fight against the oppression intensified by the Trump Administration, we have resisted Muslim bans , family separations, police violence , natural disasters , man-made disasters, undermined prot...

North Korea watchers are warning that Kim Jong Un could ratchet up tensions with the U.S. as President-elect Joe Biden prepares to take office in January. Biden will have daunting domestic challenges—the coronavirus pandemic and the recession chief among them—but he could also find his Administration quickly drawn into a nuclear standoff with North Korea. “It is possible Pyongyang will conduct a nuclear or long-range missile test prior to the inauguration or shortly thereafter as a way of laying down a marker with the new president and increasing its negotiating leverage with Washington,” Evans Revere , a member of the Council on Foreign Relations and former State Department official with extensive experience in negotiations with North Korea, tells TIME. In many ways, North Korea is more isolated, more desperate and more dangerous than ever. The pressures of crushing international sanctions, natural disasters and the coronavirus pandemic have worsened living conditio...

The post-election period got off to a raucous start Monday when President Donald Trump fired Defense Secretary Mark Esper by tweet, a decision that tossed Pentagon leadership into tumult with just 72 days before transitioning to a new administration. “Mark Esper has been terminated,” Trump tweeted. “I would like to thank him for his service.” I am pleased to announce that Christopher C. Miller, the highly respected Director of the National Counterterrorism Center (unanimously confirmed by the Senate), will be Acting Secretary of Defense, effective immediately.. — Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) November 9, 2020 The move comes two days after Joe Biden was projected to win the 2020 Presidential election, a development Trump so far refuses to accept. The President has been complaining about Esper for months, but his abrupt ouster drew immediate concern from Democrats and Republicans alike worried what other destabilizing maneuvers Trump might make before leaving the Wh...