Former President George W. Bush famously said in 2001 that he had looked at then-Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin‘s eyes and “was able to get a sense of his soul.” Vice President Joe Biden apparently never got that sense. In a lengthy new magazine profile, Biden recalls a 2011 encounter he had with Putin. “I had an interpreter,” Biden told …

A luxury condo building on New York City’s Upper West Side has gotten clearance from the city to have a separate entrance, or a “poor door,” for low-income tenants, according to the New York Post. Extell, which is building the 33-story complex, will build a specific door for the 55 affordable housing units it’s including in order to be allowed …

A majority of the 100 executed inmates examined in a new study by three legal researchers had “a severe mental illness such as schizophrenia, post-traumatic stress disorder or psychosis.” Yet, because of an oddity in the Supreme Court’s death penalty cases, it is typically constitutional under existing precedents to execute people with these illnesses. In a pair of cases decided …

Texas Gov. Rick Perry will immediately send up to 1,000 National Guard troops to help secure the southern border, where tens of thousands of unaccompanied minors from Central America have crossed into the United States this year in a surge that is deemed a humanitarian crisis. Perry also wants President Barack Obama and Congress to hire an additional 3,000 border …

The NYPD officer involved in the arrest of Eric Garner, the asthmatic 43-year-old father of six who died after being placed in a chokehold, has been stripped of his gun and badge. The Associated Press reports that Officer Daniel Pantaleo, an eight-year NYPD officer, has been placed on desk duty after being stripped of his gun and badge. Another officer …

Hot on the tail of the world’s warmest May on record, June 2014 was another one for the record books, NOAA reports. Global temperatures averaged 1.3 degrees above the 20th-century average of 59.9 degrees, mainly due to the influence of the developing El Niño out over the Pacific Ocean. Looking at the bigger picture, this marks the 352nd consecutive month …

Veteran rocker Tom Petty isn’t pulling any punches with his new song “Playing Dumb.” In an interview with Billboard magazine, Petty said that he wrote the song about the decades of child sex abuse in the Catholic church and the elaborate lengths that priests and their leaders have gone to cover up the crimes. “I’m fine with whatever religion you …