University of Chicago professor Richard Thaler has won the 2017 Nobel Prize in economics for his work on behavioral economics, which tries to understand how humans make decisions, especially bad ones.
Thaler, an American, is one of the leading experts in the relatively new field that combines psychology and economics. He has made a career of studying people’s poor choices — everything from why people save so little for retirement to why National Football League teams that go early in the annual draft typically do a poor job of selecting new players. He’s even looked at how to make bathroom floors cleaner.
“We Americans eat too much, take on too much debt, save too little and put off anything mildly unpleasant as long as possible,” Thaler wrote in a New York Times op-ed in 2011.
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American economist Richard Thaler won the 2017 Nobel Economics Prize for his research on behavioral economics, the study of how humans make decisions.(Reuters)
It was late morning in an artsy cafe, the smell of coffee and baked goods sweetening the air, and Ashley Bishop sat at a table, recalling a time when she was taught that most of secular American society was worthy of contempt.
Growing up in private evangelical Christian schools, Bishop saw the world in extremes, good and evil, heaven and hell. She was taught that to dance was to sin, that gay people were child molesters and that mental illness was a function of satanic influence. Teachers at her schools talked about slavery as black immigration, and instructors called environmentalists “hippie witches.”
Bishop’s family moved around a lot when she was a child, but her family always enrolled her in evangelical schools.
So when Bishop left school in 2003 and entered the real world at 17, she felt like she was an alien landing on Planet Earth for the first time. Having been cut off from mainstream society, she felt unequipped to handle the job market and develop secular friendships. Lacking shared cultural and historical references, she spent most of her 20s holed up in her bedroom, suffering from crippling social anxiety.
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Amanda Lucier for HuffPost
Ashley Bishop didn’t find out until after she graduated from Christian schools that she was unprepared for a wider world of education.
Annual precipitation varies from 1.9 inches on the valley floor to over 15 inches in the higher mountains. Vegetation zones include creosote bush, desert holly, and mesquite at the lower elevations up through shadscale, blackbrush, Joshua tree, pinyon-juniper, to sub-alpine limber pine and bristlecone pine woodlands.
While these conditions may seem harsh to humans, Death Valley is home to a great diversity of wildlife. Hard-learned, clever adaptations enable desert animals to thrive in this unlikely place. Desert Bighorn Sheep climbing mountain slopes. Death Valley is one of the driest places on earth.
Larry Nassar was sentenced to 60 years in federal prison Thursday on child pornography charges. The former USA Gymnastics and Michigan State University doctor knowingly collected 37,000 images and videos of child pornography as early as 2003.
U.S. District Judge Janet Neff gave Nassar the toughest sentence possible. Nassar will consecutively serve 20 years for each of the three federal charges against him.
“He has demonstrated that he should never again have access to children,” Neff said in the Grand Rapids, Michigan, courtroom.
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Nassar arrives in court on Nov. 22, 2017. JEFF KOWALSKY via Getty Images
Michael T. Slager, the white police officer whose video-recorded killing of an unarmed black motorist in North Charleston, S.C., starkly illustrated the turmoil over racial bias in American policing, was sentenced on Thursday to 20 years in prison, after the judge in the case said he viewed the shooting as a murder.
The sentence, which was within the range of federal guidelines, was pronounced in Federal District Court in Charleston about seven months after Mr. Slager pleaded guilty to violating the civil rights of Walter L. Scott when he shot and killed him in April 2015. The case against Mr. Slager is one of the few instances in which a police officer has been prosecuted for an on-duty shooting.
“We have to get this type of justice, because being a police officer is one of the most powerful jobs in the country, and it should be respected,” L. Chris Stewart, a lawyer for Mr. Scott’s family, said after the hearing, which was punctuated by tears and grief. “But that doesn’t mean you’re above the law. That doesn’t mean you can do as you please.”
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Michael Slager, the former North Charleston police officer, at the Charleston County Courthouse in December 2016.CreditRandall Hill/Reuters
The British publicist who arranged the June 2016 meeting with Russians and Donald Trump Jr. sent multiple emails to a Russian participant and a member of Donald Trump’s inner circle later that summer, multiple sources told CNN, the first indication there was any follow-up after the meeting.
The emails raise new questions for congressional investigators about what was discussed at Trump Tower. Trump Jr. has for months contended that after being promised he would get dirt on Hillary Clinton, the brief meeting focused almost exclusively on the issue of Russian adoptions, saying there was no discussion with the participants after that session.
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The emails from the publicist, Rob Goldstone, were discovered by congressional investigators and raised at Wednesday’s classified hearing with Trump Jr., who said he could not recall the interactions, several sources said. None of the newly disclosed emails were sent directly to Trump Jr. They are bound to be a subject during Goldstone’s closed-door meetings with the House and Senate intelligence panels, which are expected to take place as early as next week.
Demonstrators continued pouring into the streets Thursday to protest U.S. President Donald Trump’s highly controversial decision to recognize Jerusalem as Israel’s capital and relocate the U.S. Embassy from Tel Aviv to the contested city.
Palestinian protesters clashed with Israeli forces across Jerusalem, the West Bank and the Gaza strip on Thursday. Police even fired tear gas and stun grenades onto demonstrators in the city of Ramallah.
The day before in Gaza City and the city of Rafah, people chanted “Death to America,” “death to Israel” and “down with Trump.” They burned American and Israeli flags as well as photos of Trump, who alerted world leaders of the decision on Tuesday and formally announced the news Wednesday afternoon.
Demonstrators also gathered in several locations in Turkey, including both Istanbul and the country’s capital, Ankara, shouting slogans and brandishing Turkish and Palestinian flags. And Jordanian members of Parliament staged a protest outside the U.S. Embassy in Amman.
A few years from now, grabbing a taxi could mean taking to the skies.
Last week Dubai sent an air taxi on a five-minute test flight — its first unmanned flight over a city. The dronelike vehicle, designed by German aviation start-up Volocopter, features 18 electric-powered propellers and room for two passengers. It’s designed to fly at speeds of up to 60 miles an hour over distances of up to 20 miles.
The company hopes to make its air taxi a convenient travel option in Dubai within five years, and then across the world after that. And it promises to be as easy to hail as an Uber. “It will be integrated into your app just as if you’re choosing…a bus or a taxi,” says Florian Reuter, Volocopter’s CEO.
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Volocopter’s air taxis would be suited for quick trips across most cities.Volocopter
The British man killed by falling rock in Yosemite National Park this week reportedly died sacrificing his life — shielding his wife as the debris rained down.
An aunt of Andrew Foster, a 32-year-old avid rock climber from Wales, told the British newspaper The Times that Foster had jumped to cover his wife, Lucy, as tons of rock came cascading down the face of El Capitan on Wednesday. The 3,600-foot granite monolith is among the most fearsome scaling challenges in the world and attracts seasoned climbers.
According to aunt Gillian Stephens, Lucy, 28, later told her: “Andrew saved my life. He dived on top of me as soon as he could see what was going to happen.”
Film and Writing Festival for Comedy. Showcasing best of comedy short films at the FEEDBACK Film Festival. Plus, showcasing best of comedy novels, short stories, poems, screenplays (TV, short, feature) at the festival performed by professional actors.
American economist Richard Thaler won the 2017 Nobel Economics Prize for his research on behavioral economics, the study of how humans make decisions. 
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Volocopter’s air taxis would be suited for quick trips across most cities.
James' World 2 