Evening Edition: For Rand Paul, a rude awakening to the rigors of a national campaign

The most important stories of the day  •  Thu., Feb. 5, 2015 View in your Web browser

For Rand Paul, a rude awakening to the rigors of a national campaign Rand Paul’s plan to get himself elected president relies on two long-shot bets coming true. So far, neither one seems to be going well.Paul’s first wager is that his “libertarian-ish” ideas will manage to attract both Republicans mad about regulation and Democrats mad about government spying into an entirely new American voting bloc. “The leave-me-alone coalition,” Paul calls it.   Read full article »

Sony Pictures co-chair Amy Pascal steps down

Sony Pictures Entertainment co-chair Amy Pascal is stepping down after a massive cyberattack on her company revealed embarrassing e-mails showing her panning actors and making racially tinged jokes about  President Obama.  Read full article »

The science behind Brian Williams’s mortifying memory flub

When we tell stories about our lives, most of us never have our memories questioned. NBC's Brian Williams, like other high-profile people in the past, is finding out what happens when questions arise.Williams's faux pas — retelling a story of his helicopter coming under fire in Iraq a dozen years ago when it was actually the helicopter flying ahead of him — was much like Hillary Rodham Clinton's during the 2008 presidential campaign. Her story was about coming under fire during a visit to an airfield in Bosnia 12 years earlier. George W. Bush also misremembered when, on several occasions, he told audiences that on 9/11 he watched the first plane fly into the north tower of the World Trade Center on TV, just before entering that classroom in Florida to read a book to school kids. In each case, these were highly emotional moments. Williams's helicopter made an emergency landing in the desert behind the aircraft that was hit; Clinton was made to don a flak jacket and was told her airplane might not be able to land at the airport in Bosnia because of sniper fire in the area; and Bush was told by an aide about the first crash into World Trade Center just before entering the classroom.  Read full article »

Massive data hack of health insurer Anthem potentially exposes millions

Anthem, the nation’s second-largest health insurer, has been hacked, exposing personal information about millions of its employees and customers. It may be one of the largest data breaches yet at a major insurance company, as the company and its affiliates cover one in nine Americans.  Read full article »

Scholars votes put Kerry last in terms of effectiveness

Secretary of State John Kerry, working diligently on some extraordinarily difficult foreign policy issues — China, neo-Soviet Russia, Islamic State, Iran, etc — isn’t getting even a tiny bit of credit these days from the tweedy, elbow-patched, wing-chair crowd.  Read full article »

Harvard formally bans sexual relationships between professors and undergrads

This story has been updated.Harvard University’s Faculty of Arts and Sciences now formally bans sexual relationships between professors and undergraduate students.That’s not because they think there’s all kinds of professor-student dating on campus: The professor who led the panel that wrote the policy said she has never heard of it happening, in years of studying and teaching at Harvard. The new policy is there just to clarify that it would not be okay.  Read full article »

The forgotten history of Bruce Jenner: How the 1970s all-American hero ended up here

One day in 1977, about a year after Bruce Jenner shattered a world record to win the decathlon gold medal at the Montreal Summer Olympics, he met up with his sportswriter friend Barry McDermott to play tennis in New York City.  Read full article »

Is the Pentagon hyping climate change? Here, take a look.

Let’s face it: Climate change can be a murky thing, hard to see and touch in the here and now. Except for some melting icecaps and vanishing species, it’s more future threat than current crisis.So when the folks at the Pentagon went looking for photos to illustrate how global warming is “already beginning” to affect their 7,000 facilities, they must have been thrilled to discover an alarming image (above, far right) of a four-story building that collapsed when the permafrost melted right out from under it on a military base in Alaska.  Read full article »

Katie Ledecky finishes high school career with Olympics, more world records in sight

There she goes, out of Lane 3, this little minnow, her now-famous face obscured by swim goggles, the low-res limitations of a 2000s-era camcorder and the passing of 111/2 years. She’s struggling, stopping every four or five strokes to hang on the lane rope and wipe her nose, the swimmers on either side passing her by. Finally, she sticks her face in the water and fires her motor, arms flailing. She passes the swimmer on her right, nearly catches the one on her left and touches the wall, second place in this heat of the 6-and-under 25-yard freestyle.  Read full article »