Happy the elephant will soon have her day in New York’s highest court.

The 51-year-old Asian elephant won’t attend–among other impediments, the 8,500-pound animal lives at the Bronx Zoo–but her lawyers have filed a writ of habeas corpus, arguing she is a legal person. If she had such status, her detention at the zoo would be unlawful and she could be sent to an elephant sanctuary, her lawyers argue.

“The elephant is being imprisoned against her will,” said lawyer Steven Wise, who represents Happy.  “For more than 40 years she has been kept as a prisoner.” 

Happy is in a small but growing company of animals and natural entities fighting for legal rights—with help from their self-appointed human lawyers–in U.S. courts. The lawsuits mark an effort by lawyers who argue that animals, nature and ecosystems deserve some of the same legal rights long held by people and corporations. 

The pandemic has turned a lot of things upside down. That includes the week.

For years, Mondays sort of haunted the weekend, a looming day when the fun would be over and it was time to get serious again.

But as employers start asking their work-from-home people to come in part of the time, a different day is taking center stage: It’s Wednesday.

At lunchtime on a recent Wednesday in Midtown Manhattan—a place that still bears plenty of pandemic vacancy—most tables were full at Oceana, Del Frisco’s, Boucherie, Bobby Van’s Steakhouse and other fancy eateries.

The pandemic has turned a lot of things upside down. That includes the week.

For years, Mondays sort of haunted the weekend, a looming day when the fun would be over and it was time to get serious again.

But as employers start asking their work-from-home people to come in part of the time, a different day is taking center stage: It’s Wednesday.

At lunchtime on a recent Wednesday in Midtown Manhattan—a place that still bears plenty of pandemic vacancy—most tables were full at Oceana, Del Frisco’s, Boucherie, Bobby Van’s Steakhouse and other fancy eateries.

A breed of cryptocurrencies touted for their purported stability has come under scrutiny as regulators, individual investors and veteran digital asset traders watched one spiral from its $1 peg to pennies. 

The recent fall of TerraUSD and its sister stablecoin Luna saddled investors with billions of dollars in losses and ricocheted back into other cryptocurrencies. Their plunge has raised urgent questions about the regulation of digital assets, and undermined crypto developers’ claims they could create a new form of finance not marred by the destabilizing bank runs that occasionally happen in traditional finance. 

A breed of cryptocurrencies touted for their purported stability has come under scrutiny as regulators, individual investors and veteran digital asset traders watched one spiral from its $1 peg to pennies. 

The recent fall of TerraUSD and its sister stablecoin Luna saddled investors with billions of dollars in losses and ricocheted back into other cryptocurrencies. Their plunge has raised urgent questions about the regulation of digital assets, and undermined crypto developers’ claims they could create a new form of finance not marred by the destabilizing bank runs that occasionally happen in traditional finance. 

At the heart of our galaxy, between 26,000 and 27,000 light-years from Earth, lies a black hole four million times as massive as the sun. For the first time, scientists have captured an image of this cosmic body at the Milky Way’s center—a region of space so dense that nothing, not even light, can break free of its gravitational pull.

The image, released Thursday during simultaneous news conferences hosted by various institutions in seven countries, reveals the black hole, named Sagittarius A*, as a dark center silhouetted against a bright orange-yellow ring. Black holes by their very nature are unseeable, but their boundaries cast a shadow against the bright backdrop of hot gas and dust that encircles them. That shadow is what’s visible to certain telescopes on Earth.

At the heart of our galaxy, between 26,000 and 27,000 light-years from Earth, lies a black hole four million times as massive as the sun. For the first time, scientists have captured an image of this cosmic body at the Milky Way’s center—a region of space so dense that nothing, not even light, can break free of its gravitational pull.

The image, released Thursday during simultaneous news conferences hosted by various institutions in seven countries, reveals the black hole, named Sagittarius A*, as a dark center silhouetted against a bright orange-yellow ring. Black holes by their very nature are unseeable, but their boundaries cast a shadow against the bright backdrop of hot gas and dust that encircles them. That shadow is what’s visible to certain telescopes on Earth.

The pandemic might have killed the sick day, but the mental-health day is thriving.

With workplace burnout at high levels, nearly two-thirds of U.S. workers say they would take a day off from work for mental health now, compared with 45% before the pandemic, according to a February survey by LinkedIn. 

Yet taking a mental-health day delivers few benefits if it is spent binge-watching shows, scrolling apps or tackling the errand list, health and workplace experts say. It is useful to start a mental-health day with a plan, they say, and to include activities that are restorative but not harried, such as a long walk or a meaningful call with a friend.

The pandemic might have killed the sick day, but the mental-health day is thriving.

With workplace burnout at high levels, nearly two-thirds of U.S. workers say they would take a day off from work for mental health now, compared with 45% before the pandemic, according to a February survey by LinkedIn. 

Yet taking a mental-health day delivers few benefits if it is spent binge-watching shows, scrolling apps or tackling the errand list, health and workplace experts say. It is useful to start a mental-health day with a plan, they say, and to include activities that are restorative but not harried, such as a long walk or a meaningful call with a friend.

Enervise Inc. recently found someone to fill a $75,000-a-year job. The new hire said he would move to Cincinnati and report to orientation at 8 a.m. on his first Monday. The day before, he emailed to say he had changed his mind.

Taken aback, Aaron Dorfman, the recruiting manager for the facility-services and plumbing company, emailed back. No response. “I called, too, and it was just crickets,” he said.

Add another head-scratching new feature to the post-Covid employment landscape: A job isn’t filled until the new hire actually shows up for work.