Niraj Chokshi

The Transportation Security Administration has had a change of heart after telling travelers that they could not fly with soft drink bottles shaped like the thermal detonators featured in “Star Wars.” The novelty items are fine to bring along, it said, whether you’re traveling near or far, far away.

The spherical bottles of Coca-Cola, Diet Coke and Sprite are available for purchase at “Star Wars: Galaxy’s Edge,” newly opened sections of the theme parks at Walt Disney World in Florida and Disneyland in California.

The saga over the souvenir containers, which have labels printed in the “Aurebesh” language used in the movies, began not too long ago when a Twitter user asked the agency’s “AskTSA” account whether the bottles could be packed in a suitcase.

“Thanks for asking!” the account replied on Aug. 13. “Replica and inert explosives aren’t allowed in either carry-on or checked bags.”

That response earned a fair amount of ridicule online, but the agency doubled down last week.

“It could create concern that it’s the real thing,” Jim Gregory, a TSA spokesman, told a reporter in California in defending the decision.

The thermal detonators on which the soft drink bottles are modeled are powerful explosives in the “Star Wars” universe. In “Return of the Jedi,” Princess Leia, in disguise, threatens Jabba the Hutt with one.

Last Wednesday, however, the TSA offered traveling fans new hope: “We have completed our review, and instructed our officers to treat these as an oversized liquid,” it said in a statement.

Passengers will be able to pack the bottles in checked baggage or empty the containers of their contents and carry them aboard planes, it said. But the agency warned that it reserved the right to alter the deal further.

“TSA officers will maintain the discretion to prohibit any item through the screening checkpoint if they believe it poses a security threat,” it said.

This article originally appeared in

TSA Reverses Ban on 'Star Wars'-Themed Thermal Detonator Coke Bottles

These aren’t the bombs airport security is looking for.

Five others were rescued, and the boat sank 20 yards offshore as fire department crews were fighting the blaze, according to the statement.

The boat was a 75-foot scuba diving vessel named “Conception,” according to Petty Officer Mark Barney, a Coast Guard spokesman. A boat of that length and with that name had been scheduled for a three-day scuba diving trip in the area beginning Saturday, according to the website of Truth Aquatics, a Santa Barbara tour operator.

Barney said the boat was carrying six crew members and 32 passengers. He did not say whether the five individuals rescued were crew or passengers. (An official with the Ventura County Fire Department previously told The New York Times that 34 people were missing and five were rescued.)

The Coast Guard picked up a mayday call related to the fire about 3:15 a.m. and has since dispatched two helicopter crews and two boats to the scene, where they were met by partner law enforcement agencies, according to Barney. First responders were met with dense fog at the scene, according to Santa Barbara Harbor Patrol Officer Nathan Alldredge.

Santa Cruz Island, located in Santa Barbara County, is one of five islands in Channel Islands National Park, according to the website for National Park Service, which owns and manages about a quarter of the island. The other three-quarters is owned and managed by the Nature Conservancy. California’s largest island at about 96 square miles, Santa Cruz Island is about 20 miles from Ventura, the website said.

33 Missing in Boat Fire Off Santa Cruz Island in California, Officials Say

The U.S. Coast Guard is searching for 33 people after a boat caught fire north of Santa Cruz Island in Southern California early Monday, the Coast Guard said in a statement.

According to a new study, people find even the most groan-inducing one-liners funnier when they are paired with a laugh track. And the type of laughter matters, too: A joke seems even funnier when accompanied by laughter that seems genuine rather than forced.

“If there’s a laugh there, you can’t ignore it,” said Prof. Sophie Scott, the incoming director of the Institute of Cognitive Neuroscience at the University College London and one of the authors of the study.

Take this zinger: “What does a dinosaur use to pay bills? Tyrannosaurus checks.”

Participants in the study, published Monday in the journal Current Biology, gave that joke an average rating of about 2 on a 7-point scale, with higher scores awarded to funnier jokes. The average rating increased to more than 2.5 when paired with forced laughter, and to more than three with genuine laughter.

The pattern held for dozens of other one-liners, too.

How do billboards talk? Sign language.

To test the perceived humor of the jokes, researchers at University College London hired a professional comedian to create recordings of 40 jokes, selected for mediocrity to leave room for the possibility that laughter could improve their ratings. Separately, they recorded six adults laughing on command as well as in response to something that each found genuinely funny.

The researchers first established a baseline by asking 20 college students to score each joke without any laughter present. (For reference, “What is the best day to cook? Fry‐day” earned a rating of just under 2.5, and “What state has the smallest drinks? Mini‐soda” earned just under 3.)

What did the hammer say to his homeboys? Nailed it.

Then, the researchers presented more than 70 adults with the same jokes, accompanied by recordings of either forced or genuine laughter.

The researchers included about two dozen adults with autism in the second group, offering an opportunity to measure whether there were any differences in how people with autism process laughter, as previous studies have suggested. Laughter had the same effect on joke ratings among all participants, the study found, although those with autism did find the one-liners funnier overall.

What do you call a deer with no eyes? No idea.

One thing is clear: Perceptions of humor are not objective. As the study’s authors acknowledged, others have found that the perceived funniness of a joke can be affected by factors like delivery and cultural context. Their own findings Monday shed light on the social influences.

“It takes us from people’s emotional lives directly into their social interactions and how those two things can be working,” Scott said.

While the study did not seek to answer how laughter influenced joke ratings, the researchers suggested that the laughter could have been contagious or could have acted as a signal of approval of the joke.

And one last zinger — a word we use lightly — from the study: “What did the duck do when he read all these jokes? He quacked up.”

This article originally appeared in <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2019/07/23/us/laugh-track-jokes-humor.html" id="57420c2e-c249-31e0-ad23-5fc2e7bd534e">The New York Times</a>.

Humor, it has been said, “can be dissected, as a frog can, but the thing dies in the process.” Well, get out the scalpels: We have dad jokes to analyze.

With Dad Jokes, a Little Laugh Track Goes a Long Way

All because of an innocuous tweet from former FBI Director James Comey.

Scott Maddock, principal of the Grass Valley Charter School in Grass Valley, California, was unaware of the conspiracy theory when he arrived at work on a normal-seeming Monday morning in late April. But when he checked his voicemail, he heard from a man identifying himself as “a patriot,” alerting Maddock to the “threat.”

“He was warning us that something was going to happen at our Blue Marble Jubilee school fundraiser and that we should contact the authorities,” Maddock said. “He kept saying that he is not behind it, but he has a credible source.”

Maddock wasn’t sure what to make of it. The message, left over the weekend, was nearly three minutes long, repetitive and inarticulate. But ignoring it wasn’t an option.

“It puts a pit in your stomach and a weight on your chest that you can’t just shake as something that’s just kind of crazy,” he said.

Out of an abundance of caution, he contacted the local police, who visited the school, recorded the message and began investigating.

It didn’t take long to unearth the roots of the threat, preposterous as they were.

Two days earlier, on April 27, Comey had shared a tweet listing a handful of jobs he had held in the past alongside the hashtag #FiveJobsIveHad.

Hundreds of others had done the same before and since, but a small fringe group of conspiracy theorists seized on the tweet, claiming it contained a coded message.

By removing letters, the hashtag could be shortened to “Five Jihad,” they argued. And a search for the abbreviation formed by the first letters of the jobs he listed — GVCSF — led to the Grass Valley Charter School Foundation, whose fundraiser was scheduled for this weekend.

Comey, they concluded, was broadcasting an attack, perhaps as a distraction from other pending news.

The Grass Valley police quickly determined that the theory was baseless and that the school, with about 500 students from prekindergarten through eighth grade, was under no threat.

“We definitely did our due diligence,” Police Chief Alex Gammelgard said. “Every single potential piece we did pointed to the same thing: that it was not credible.”

But word traveled fast in Grass Valley, which is home to about 13,000 people.

Maddock and Wendy Willoughby, president of the foundation, had started to hear from parents who were worried not about the predicted attack, but about the people who believed in it.

What if one of them showed up, armed, to protect against a threat that simply did not exist, as had happened at a popular Washington pizzeria two years ago? At the same time, some members of the community vowed to attend the event to provide protection.

After several sleepless nights, Maddock, worried the event could spiral out of control, announced last week that the fundraiser was canceled, as reported by The Sacramento Bee.

“This is an event with children’s games, and activities and face painting, and a student art auction, and live music and food, and just a real community builder for us,” he said. “I didn’t want the flavor of the event to be suddenly tainted by people that were showing up for all the wrong reasons.”

One of the first people to warn the school about the false conspiracy theory was Mike Rothschild, a researcher who had watched it gain steam online, its signal boosted by increasingly high-profile Twitter accounts.

“I saw it unfolding, and I recognized immediately how bad this could get,” he said. “And ultimately it happened.”

He had urged the school not to cancel the event for fear that those who believed in the conspiracy theory would claim victory (they did), but in the end Rothschild said he understood why officials made the decision they did.

Such theories have received much attention in the press during the past year or so, but they remain on the fringes, said Rob Brotherton, an assistant professor of psychology at Barnard College who has long studied conspiracy theories.

Giving them oxygen, even while debunking them, can nevertheless allow them to grow, he warned.

“It seems to me, having studied these things for a long time, that giving it this kind of platform, even when it’s clearly framed as, ‘This conspiracy theory is not true,’ is only going to raise its profile,” he said.

But Rothschild disagreed with that sentiment. “This is happening whether or not we write about it,” he said. “The first time you encounter this should be poking a hole in it.”

And fringe though they may be, online conspiracy theories can spiral out of control, resulting in real-world consequences, as was the case for the Grass Valley Charter School.

Not only was the community subjected to a minor panic because of the baseless conspiracy theory, but the school also missed out on an opportunity to raise about $15,000 and recoup thousands more that had been spent on the fundraiser, Paddock said.

Students suffered, too, Willoughby said. The theme for this year’s fundraiser was “Save the Western Monarch Butterfly,” and the event was to include a butterfly drawing contest with the submissions to be displayed at the festival, she said.

On Thursday, Willoughby gathered the submissions anyway, including one from a girl who had cut out her butterfly, pasted it onto a background and attached a piece of leather rope for it to hang up at the fundraiser.

“It’s heartbreaking that these kids, that this is taken from them,” Willoughby said.

Meanwhile, the online community that spread the false conspiracy theory to begin with has found a new subject to investigate, according to Rothschild.

“This stuff moves so fast,” he said. “They’ve already moved on.”

How a James Comey tweet fueled a conspiracy theory that upended a California town

A town in the foothills of the Sierra Nevada recently found itself at the center of a baseless conspiracy theory that predicted an attack on a school fundraiser.

Scott Maddock, principal of the Grass Valley Charter School in Grass Valley, California, was unaware of the conspiracy theory when he arrived at work on a normal-seeming Monday morning in late April. But when he checked his voicemail, he heard a man identifying himself as “a patriot,” alerting Maddock to the “threat.”

Maddock wasn’t sure what to make of it. The message was nearly three minutes long, repetitive and inarticulate. But ignoring it wasn’t an option.

Out of an abundance of caution, he contacted police, who began investigating.

On April 27, Comey had shared a tweet listing a handful of jobs he had held in the past alongside the hashtag #FiveJobsIveHad.

Comey, they concluded, was broadcasting an attack.

Grass Valley police quickly determined that the theory was baseless and that the school, with about 500 students from prekindergarten through eighth grade, was under no threat.

But word traveled fast in Grass Valley, home to about 13,000 people.

What if one of them showed up, armed, to protect against a threat that did not exist, as had happened at a popular Washington pizzeria two years ago? At the same time, some members of the community vowed to attend the event to provide protection.

This article originally appeared in <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2019/05/11/us/grass-valley-james-comey-conspiracy.html" id="3b6159c2-1f10-31ae-ae41-9844cdb85b73">The New York Times</a>.

How a James Comey Tweet Fueled a Conspiracy Theory That Upended a California Town

Overall, about 3 in 4 adults said that a diverse population is either somewhat or very good for the country, according to the survey, published on Wednesday by the Pew Research Center. That view is even more prevalent among Democrats and individuals with higher education.

On matters of diversity, Americans are often divided along party lines, with Democrats tending to be more likely to embrace ethnic, racial and cultural differences, according to the poll, which surveyed more than 6,600 adults earlier this year.

Consider views on how population diversity affects the national culture. Overall, half of Republicans and three-quarters of Democrats said diversity has a positive effect in the country. Conversely, 21% of Republicans said diversity negatively affects the national culture, compared with 5% of Democrats. (For this survey, Pew defined Republicans as anyone who identifies as or leans Republican, and Democrats as those who identify as or lean Democratic.)

Workplace diversity was another issue on which Americans diverged by party. Generally, those surveyed found it very or somewhat important for companies and organizations to promote a diverse labor force, yet only 36% of Democrats and just 9% of Republicans said that race and ethnicity should be considered in hiring as a means to increase such diversity.

Even when looking only at white respondents, views continued to diverge along party lines. For example, among those who live in the least diverse neighborhoods, about 45% of white Democrats said they wished their communities were more racially mixed, compared with 12% of white Republicans.

The divide also extends to views regarding non-English speakers. Among white Republicans, nearly half — 47% — said that hearing a foreign language spoken in public would bother them somewhat or a lot. Eighteen percent of white Democrats said the same. (Fifty-eight percent of white Democrats said they wouldn’t be bothered at all, compared with 26% of white Republicans.)

Of course, party affiliation is not the only factor that divides Americans’ opinions on diversity. Race and education play roles, too.

When it comes to hiring, for example, 78% of white adults said that only a job candidate’s qualifications should be considered, even if workplace diversity suffers, while 54% of black adults said the same.

Black adults also placed a much higher premium on diversity in schools, with 68% saying children should attend schools that are racially and ethnically mixed even if those institutions are outside a child’s local community. Only 49% of Asians and Hispanics, and 35% of whites, agreed.

Regardless of race, formal education was tied closely to overall views on diversity. Among whites as well as blacks with a high school education or less, 63% said that it was very or somewhat good that the national population was made up of people of many races and ethnicities. That number rose to 87% when asked of white and black adults with a bachelor’s degree or higher.

This article originally appeared in <a id="69753386-79fc-3a9d-aed7-8f6a709af7d5" href="https://www.nytimes.com/2019/05/08/us/americans-racial-diversity.html">The New York Times</a>.

Americans Like Diversity, Survey Finds. (At Least in the Abstract.)

Americans mostly think it is good that the nation has an ethnically and racially mixed population, but their views diverge when it comes to specifics about how that diversity affects their lives, a new survey found.

Americans like diversity, survey finds, (At least in the abstract)

Less than 48 hours after Episode 4 of Season 8 dropped, the cup was edited out of the scene on HBO’s streaming platform, a spokeswoman confirmed. (Future rebroadcasts on cable TV will also exclude the cup.)

That’s right. While the big, bad Night King failed to “erase the memory of Westeros,” as Bran Stark put it, HBO was able to do so using the magic of digital editing.

The Verge was among the first to report the change and even made a cool GIF, because that’s how we consume and reconsume entertainment media now.

In the episode, titled “The Last of the Starks,” an early scene showed a group of characters celebrating by candlelight after defeating an army of the undead in Episode 3.

For a moment, a coffee cup could be seen on a table in front of Daenerys Targaryen, also known as the “Dragon Queen,” who is on a mission to rid the world of tyrants at any cost.

The show’s obsessive fan base was, of course, quick to make light of it on social media.

Many fans joked that it was a Starbucks order, and the coffee company itself piled on with a joke about its “Dragon Drink,” a sweet, pink concoction. But it was apparently a humble craft services to-go cup.

HBO eventually made light of the error, too, saying that Daenerys had actually “ordered an herbal tea.”

If you must, you may look for the cup that isn’t there about 17 minutes and 38 seconds into the episode on HBO Go or HBO Now.

This article originally appeared in <a id="00b0a83c-1339-48c9-b1dd-c356525d86a3" href="https://www.nytimes.com/2019/05/07/arts/television/game-of-thrones-coffee-cup-removed-hbo.html">The New York Times</a>.

HBO erases the 'Game of Thrones' coffee cup

Cup? What cup?: Fans of “Game of Thrones” flooded the internet with japes about a scene in Sunday night’s episode that showed an out-of-place coffee cup in the show’s fantasy world, but now HBO has rewritten Westeros history.

Fans of “Game of Thrones” flooded the internet with japes about a scene in Sunday night’s episode that showed an out-of-place coffee cup in the show’s fantasy world, but now HBO has rewritten Westerosi history.

This article originally appeared in <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2019/05/07/arts/television/game-of-thrones-coffee-cup-removed-hbo.html" id="c1762c96-9f9b-35fa-a8d8-0c3c75d842b1">The New York Times</a>.

Cup? What cup?

HBO Erases the 'Game of Thrones' Coffee Cup

Not only has he come to dominate the list of highest single-game payouts, but Holzhauer has also become only the second contestant to earn more than $1 million in regular-season play. On Monday night, he continued his streak, winning his 18th game by just $18.

For some contestants, winning might usher in 15 minutes of fame and a small, unexpected windfall. But for players like Holzhauer, securing records, fame and big winnings can be transformative, creating opportunities and providing a level of financial security unthinkable to many Americans.

We caught up with a few “Jeopardy!” stars to ask them how their time on the show affected their lives.

Ken Jennings

Before he became a “Jeopardy!” legend, Ken Jennings was a 29-year-old computer programmer living in Salt Lake City, wondering if there was any way out of a career in coding.

“My wife says I kept talking about going to law school, that’s how desperate I was,” he joked.

Jennings had double-majored in English and computer science and always wanted to write, but after graduating and getting engaged he took a job at a tech startup to pay the bills. Then he qualified for “Jeopardy!”

In 2004, Jennings won 74 games in a row, earning more than $2.5 million. No one has come close to beating his streak (the nearest challenger won 20 consecutive games), though Holzhauer is closing in.

In April, Holzhauer became the only contestant to join Jennings in earning more than $1 million in regular-season play. (Another contestant, Brad Rutter, has earned more than either of them, but he earned the vast majority of his winnings — more than $4.5 million — in arguably more difficult tournament games.)

For Jennings, “Jeopardy!” significantly altered the course of his life. “It changed what I did every day,” he said.

After the show, Jennings decided to write a book about the history and appeal of trivia in America. In 2006, he published “Brainiac: Adventures in the Curious, Competitive, Compulsive World of Trivia Buffs,” which did well enough for him to keep going.

“Each book sold better than the last, which is what publishers are into,” he said.

His books since include a trivia almanac, a debunking of myths passed down to children, and a book about how comedy has come to dominate culture. Jennings says he is now working on his 13th book, a travel guide to various depictions of the afterlife throughout human history.

(When he isn’t writing books, Jennings writes about travel and trivia online and hosts, with musician John Roderick, a podcast about historical oddities called “Omnibus!”)

More than anything, his time on “Jeopardy!” gave him precious freedom from a rigid career.

“The main thing that the show got me, honestly, is that I don’t work a 9-to-5 anymore,” he said. “I’m a freelancer, so I can be here when my kids come home from school, I can drive them to the bus, I can go to the midday middle school choir concert. To me, that means more than the money, honestly.”

Larissa Kelly

For Larissa Kelly, appearing on the show in 2008 and 2009 provided a lifeline for her and her husband, who were graduate students at the University of California, Berkeley, facing a job market in the throes of the Great Recession.

“Having the money from ‘Jeopardy!’ meant that we had the freedom to think about where do we want to go, what do we want to do,” said Kelly, whose appearances then and since have made her one of the highest-earning contestants in the show’s history, with winnings of more than $660,000.

The money has allowed Kelly and her husband, Jeff Hoppes, to buy a house in Richmond, California, and given them the freedom to pursue jobs related to what they love.

“For the last six or seven years, we’ve both been doing professional trivia, and it was feasible for us to do that in a way that I don’t think it would have been without the cushion provided by ‘Jeopardy!’,” she said.

Kelly now edits questions for National Academic Quiz Tournaments, which runs national quiz bowl championships at the middle school, high school and collegiate levels. Her husband is the organization’s vice president for communication.

Unlike other “Jeopardy!” champions, though, Kelly doesn’t get much opportunity to gloat. Not only were her sister and husband on the show, but Jennings, who beat her husband, is also a colleague at National Academic Quiz Tournaments.

“For a lot of people, it’s likely that they might be the only person at their company who was on ‘Jeopardy!’,” she said. “For me, I am never going to be the premier ‘Jeopardy!’ player at my company.”

Monica Thieu

Monica Thieu was technically still in high school when she first appeared on the show, but because she was enrolled in classes at the University of North Texas, she was allowed to compete in the show’s college championship in 2012.

Thieu won the title and $100,000, a prize that helped her pay for tuition at Stanford University.

“We might not have been able to afford it if we didn’t have the ‘Jeopardy!’ money,” she said.

At Stanford, Thieu worked in a psychology laboratory dedicated to the research of memory. She graduated in three years as a psychology major and is now a Ph.D. student at Columbia University, where she mostly studies how people perceive emotions.

The show, she said, probably enabled that career path.

“If I had gone somewhere else, I might have done something else,” she said. “I might have made my parents happy and been in medical school right now.”

Thieu appeared again on “Jeopardy!” in 2013 and for this year’s “All-Star Games” (in which she played on Jennings’ team).

Since her first appearance, though, Thieu has avoided telling people up front about her time on the show for fear that it would come to define her.

“I don’t want to be the ‘Jeopardy!’ girl,” she said. “I would like to be the girl that has these other hobbies and interests.”

Fortunately, it hasn’t been much of a problem. Aside from a few fan encounters, Thieu has, for the most part, continued to live a life of anonymity.

Roger Craig

Before Holzhauer obliterated the record, the title for most money won in a single game of “Jeopardy!” belonged to Roger Craig. (Before him, it belonged to Jennings.)

Craig became famous among fans of the show not only for that record — which he claimed by winning $77,000 in a single game in late 2010 — but also for how he achieved it.

To prepare for the game, Craig, who was finishing graduate school at the time, used a background in machine learning to analyze tens of thousands of past “Jeopardy!” questions and answers, which he downloaded from a fan-run website. He used his findings to direct his studies for the show and to hone his strategy during the game.

“That was probably the biggest thing that was unique to me, was becoming known for that because it was also related to my line of work,” Craig said.

But unlike other big winners, his life did not hugely change after he appeared on the show.

His sizable winnings gave him some financial freedom, but he still works in machine learning and artificial intelligence, now as a consultant, he said. And while people recognize him from the show, that recognition fades with the passage of time.

Appearing on “Jeopardy!” and in subsequent interviews with journalists did, however, help strengthen Craig’s public speaking abilities.

“Once you’ve done a television show and you’re up there in front of millions of people, to me, speaking in front of a few hundred or a few thousand people is not a big deal,” he said.

This article originally appeared in <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2019/04/30/arts/television/james-holzhauer-jeopardy.html" id="444639f3-d1cc-39b9-a4e8-d372e8b84735">The New York Times</a>.

James Holzhauer is officially “Jeopardy!” royalty.

'Jeopardy!' Champs on Life Beyond the Buzzer

This month, Holzhauer became the only contestant to join Jennings in earning more than $1 million in regular-season play. (Another contestant, Brad Rutter, has earned more than either of them, but he earned the vast majority of his winnings — more than $4.5 million — in arguably more difficult tournament games.)

Before Holzhauer obliterated the record this month, the title for most money won in a single game of “Jeopardy!” belonged to Roger Craig. (Before him, it belonged to Jennings.)

James Holzhauer Is Dominating 'Jeopardy!' But What's Life Like After the Show?

Last year, Americans reported feeling stress, anger and worry at the highest levels in a decade, according to the survey, part of an annual Gallup poll of more than 150,000 people around the world, released Thursday.

“What really stood out for the U.S. is the increase in the negative experiences,” said Julie Ray, Gallup’s managing editor for world news. “This was kind of a surprise to us when we saw the numbers head in this direction.”

For the annual poll, started in 2005, Gallup asks individuals about whether they have experienced a handful of positive or negative feelings the day before being interviewed. The data on Americans is based on responses from more than 1,000 adults.

In the United States, about 55% of adults said they had experienced stress during “a lot of the day” prior, compared with just 35% globally. Statistically, that put the country on par with Greece, which had led the rankings on stress since 2012.

About 45% of the Americans surveyed said they had felt “a lot” of worry the day before, compared with a global average of 39%. Meanwhile, the share of Americans who reported feeling “a lot” of anger the day before being interviewed was the same as the global average: 22%.

When Gallup investigated the responses more closely, it found that being under 50, earning a low income and having a dim view of President Donald Trump’s job performance were correlated with negative experiences among adults in the United States.

But there still is not enough data to say for sure whether any of those factors were behind the feelings of stress, worry and anger.

“We are seeing patterns that would point to a political explanation, or a polarization explanation, with the U.S. data, but can we say that definitively? No,” Ray said.

The findings were not all bleak for the United States. Despite having widespread negative experiences, Americans also generally reported more positive experiences, on average, than the rest of the world did.

Globally, just 49% of those interviewed said they had learned or had done something interesting the day before. In the United States, however, 64% of adults said the same.

The two sets of questions, about negative and positive experiences, are unconnected, according to Ray. An individual can, for example, feel both stressed and well-rested for much of a given day.

“If you think about how you felt yesterday, you didn’t just feel one way the entire day,” she said.

Negative experiences were assessed by asking about physical pain, worry, sadness, stress and anger. Positive experiences were measured by asking whether individuals felt well-rested, felt treated with respect, smiled or laughed, learned or did something interesting and felt enjoyment.

The margin of error in the poll ranged from 2.1 to 5.3 percentage points, depending on the country. The results for the United States, where interviews were conducted from Aug. 13 to Sept. 30, had a margin of error of 4 percentage points.

Negative experiences remained at record highs

Worldwide, negative experiences were just as widespread last year as in 2017, which was the darkest year for humanity in more than a decade, according to Gallup. While stress declined globally, anger increased. Worry and sadness reached new heights, and feelings of physical pain were unchanged.

For the first time, Chad topped the list as the country with the highest response of negative experiences in the world.

“The country’s overall score at least partly reflects the violence, displacement and the collapse of basic services in parts of Chad that have affected thousands of families,” Gallup said in the report.

Additional countries that led the world in negative experiences included other African nations, like Niger and Sierra Leone, and some in the Middle East, such as Iraq and Iran.

Nations in Latin America once again led the list of countries where positive experiences were highest, despite the fact that some of the countries that topped the list, like El Salvador and Honduras, are home to some of the world’s highest murder rates.

This article originally appeared in <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2019/04/25/us/americans-stressful.html" id="e96134e0-68dc-34ee-ad43-0283db69d068">The New York Times</a>.

Americans Are Among the Most Stressed People in the World, Poll Finds

Americans are among the most stressed people in the world, according to a new survey. And that is just the start of it.

When Gallup investigated the responses more closely, it found that being under 50, earning a low income and having a dim view of President Donald Trump’s job performance were correlated with negative experiences among adults in the United States. But there still is not enough data to say for sure whether any of those factors were behind the feelings of stress, worry and anger.

Americans also generally reported more positive experiences, on average, than the rest of the world did. Globally, just 49% of those interviewed said they had learned or had done something interesting the day before. In the United States, however, 64% of adults said the same.

Worldwide, while stress declined, anger increased. Worry and sadness reached new heights, and feelings of physical pain were unchanged.

The man entered the cathedral just before 8 p.m. but was turned away by a church security officer, according to John Miller, the Police Department’s deputy commissioner of intelligence and counterterrorism. As the man exited, some gasoline spilled on the floor.

The security officer then notified two police officers outside the cathedral, who caught up to the man and began to question him. While he was cooperative, his answers were inconsistent and evasive, Miller said at a news conference.

“His basic story was that he was cutting through the cathedral to get to Madison Avenue, that his car had run out of gas,” Miller said. “We took a look at the vehicle. It was not out of gas, and at that point he was taken into custody.”

The man was also carrying two bottles of lighter fluid and two extended butane lighters, Miller said. The man was uninjured and the church was undamaged.

“The individual was stopped as he tried to come into the cathedral,” the Archdiocese of New York said in a statement. The man, the statement continued, “was turned over to the police. Nothing happened inside the cathedral.”

Charges were not immediately filed against the man, whose name the police did not release. “He is known to police,” Miller said, without elaborating.

The episode drew a heavy police presence. About a dozen officers gathered on the corner of Fifth Avenue and 50th Street in Manhattan, while another officer directed traffic at the corner. Another half-dozen officers stood outside the entrance to the church.

The encounter happened two days after a fire tore through the Notre Dame cathedral in Paris, one of that city’s most famous monuments. Investigators are still looking into the specific cause of that fire, though it was believed to be accidental.

St. Patrick’s Cathedral seats about 2,200 people and opened its doors in May 1879.

This article originally appeared in <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2019/04/17/nyregion/st-patricks-cathedral-marc-lamparello.html" id="7d06a9f6-e8a2-3b24-ac27-2a05c7a73332">The New York Times</a>.

Man With Two Full Gas Cans Arrested After Entering St. Patrick's Cathedral

NEW YORK — A 37-year-old New Jersey man carrying a pair of full two-gallon cans of gasoline was arrested Wednesday night after entering St. Patrick’s Cathedral in New York, police said.

Niraj Chokshi

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