When news hit of the measles outbreak in the Orthodox Jewish community in New York, I was shocked and appalled. And I felt a little bit to blame.In 2013, as a junior in college, I was working as a teacher and an extra, going to set between classes, capitalizing on my Semitic facial features and access to Hasidic wardrobe items. One day, I responded to an ad looking for actors to play Hasidic men.

Fifty years ago, on March 8, 1969, 10,600 people filed into the University of Georgia’s Stegeman Coliseum. Why the excitement? LSU basketball star “Pistol Pete” Maravich was in town. Maravich scored 58 points that night and was mobbed by adoring fans. His career college scoring average was more than 44 per game. The game at Georgia defines an era embodied by Maravich and contemporaries Calvin Murphy of Niagara University and Rick Mount of Purdue.

With 10 seconds left and St. John's trailing by one in a pivotal February Big East clash, there was zero debate over who would get the rock. Everyone inside Carnesecca Arena, the on-campus Queens, New York, home of the Red Storm, knew the ball was going to Shamorie Ponds. Sure, junior transfer Mustapha Heron was hot and Marvin Clark had nailed four 3-pointers, but now it was crunch time.

The United States and Cuba - which eked out its 60th year of revolution in January - have brokered respectable changes in the recent past. President Obama rewrote Cold War policy that governed the decades-long stalemate. Embassies reopened, air travel recommenced and an economic-development vision was put in place. Obama even traveled to Havana to meet with Raúl Castro. Something new was afoot.Or so it seemed. Critically, the rapprochement did not abrogate the U.S.

Are you getting enough rest? Well, since you’re up anyway, let OZY fill you in on the science of sleep. How did you sleep? It's a critical question for everyone, and this OZY original series explores the present and future of sleep ... as well as its weird past. This OZY original series explores the past, present and future of sleep. How did you sleep? It's a critical question for everyone, and this OZY original series explores the present and future of sleep ... as well as its weird past.

It was my 21st birthday. I'd been away down South at college but decided to head home to celebrate with friends and family back in Lodi, New Jersey. Lodi, outside of being the home of Glenn Danzig and his band Misfits, was a pretty normal Jersey suburb. But like I said I was on a break from college, and I wanted to have a big party. How big? So big that I even made flyers. Just like we'd do for shows back in the day pre-Facebook.

Manu Bhaker is still in her tracksuit as she sits in her apartment in Faridabad, in northern India's Haryana state, after returning from eight hours of practice on the shooting range. But even without a gun, the 17-year-old Indian target shooter is busy, now with her phone, scrolling through her Instagram feed. At that moment, she's an archetypal teenager. Except that Bhaker is anything but normal.

By the time Luis Ramírez was 16 years old, he was well acquainted with death. Of his 25 childhood friends, 23 had been killed, and the other two were in jail. Now a hip-hop artist called AKA, hailing from one of the most violent neighborhoods in Colombia, he draws on that gritty background - but he's not a gangster. No, Ramírez's idea of radical resistance involves getting up before dawn to garden.

Because sometimes being a stranger in a strange place works to your benefit. But mix in a chemist, drugs andgangsters, and it becomes a very different story. I first came to Taiwan in ’84. I was in my early 20s, and I’d been living in Hong Kong, but I wasn’t too happy there, so I came to Taiwan, checked it out and liked it. There was a lot of stuff happening then that wasn’t around in Hong Kong, mainly drugs.

While waiting in line at the bank, or at the grocery store, or even getting gas, you could be faulted for making the mistake. Once.Because at about 5-foot-10 and maybe 50 pounds over his one-time fight weight of 175, Javier Mendez could easily be just another 50-something Silicon Valley wage slave or, best case, a soccer dad.