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As the novel coronavirus began to spread through Minneapolis this spring, Health Commissioner Gretchen Musicant tore up her budget to find funds to combat the crisis. Money for test kits. Money to administer tests. Money to hire contact tracers. And yet even more money for a service that helps tracers communicate with residents in dozens of languages.  While Musicant diverted workers from violence prevention and other core programs to the COVID-19 response, state officials debated how to distribute $1.87 billion Minnesota received in federal aid. As she waited, the Minnesota Zoo got $6 million in federal money to continue operations, and a debt collection...

Editor’s Note: The Atlantic is making vital coverage of the coronavirus available to all readers. Find the collection here. Michael Mina is a professor of epidemiology at Harvard, where he studies the diagnostic testing of infectious diseases. He has watched, with disgust and disbelief, as the United States has struggled for months to obtain enough tests to fight the coronavirus. In January, he assured a newspaper reporter that he had “absolute faith” in the ability of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention to contain the virus. By early March, that conviction was in crisis. “The incompetence has really exceeded...

As the novel coronavirus began to spread through Minneapolis this spring, Health Commissioner Gretchen Musicant tore up her budget to find funds to combat the crisis. Money for test kits. Money to administer tests. Money to hire contact tracers. And yet even more money for a service that helps tracers communicate with residents in dozens of languages.  While Musicant diverted workers from violence prevention and other core programs to the COVID-19 response, state officials debated how to distribute $1.87 billion Minnesota received in federal aid. As she waited, the Minnesota Zoo got $6 million in federal money to continue operations, and a debt collection...

What separates the casual fiction writer from the professional one is the commitment to daily writing. But sometimes it’s more of a challenge to get the words flowing. If nothing triggered you today, and if your mind is playing hopscotch with ideas, fiction writing prompts can get you past the brain block into full writing mode. The following lists are fiction writing prompts for adults and realistic fiction writing prompts, and while there’s nothing NSFW ahead, the fiction writing ideas are best suited to books written for mature readers. Here’s how to use these writing prompts: Choose a prompt that...

Ten years after their founding, the Zurich-based carry brand QWSTION achieved an important milestone in their quest to produce full life cycle sustainable products – the release of their Minimal Collection utilizing their breakthrough fabric, Bananatex. Now, less than two years later, they are back with their latest effort, the BioLight Collection. To me, it represents two things: the culmination of QWSTION’s singular focus for the past decade and one of the most important carry releases this year. Allow me to explain. If you take the time to think about how we typically discuss bags, there is very little consideration...