The Atlantic: Millennials: The Mobile and the Stuck

In the aftermath of the recession and weak recovery, the share of 18- to- 34 year olds—a.k.a.: Millennials—who own a home has fallen to a 30-year low. For the first time on record going back more than a century, young people are now more likely to live with their parents than with a spouse. [...]

On the first track, there are high-achieving students, who disproportionately come from richer districts. This group is more likely to move away to go to college and then settle in one of a handful of dense cities, where they delay buying a house (and delay starting a family) in order to rent throughout their 20s and focus on their careers. For example, about half of college graduates are working outside their state of birth by the age of 35. This group is also mostly white. They are the supermobile: ambitious, devoted to their professional lives, and comfortable with a life path that has them getting married in their late twenties-to-mid-thirties. [...]

The primary reason that the U.S. now has a record-high number of 18-to-34 year olds living with their parents is not because some rich white twentysomethings are taking a year after graduation to save money. It is because black and Hispanic Millennials who didn’t go to college, or did not finish college, are more likely to live with their parents than any time since the late 1800s.

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The Atlantic: An Epochal Discovery: A Habitable Planet Orbits Our Neighboring Star

The dim red star soon entered the collective imagination, inspiring dreams of interstellar travel. Gravity has linked the star to the Alpha Centauri system, but our culture of science and storytelling has linked it to the solar system. Today, that link will grow stronger, when an international team of astronomers announces that this nearest of stars also hosts the closest exoplanet, one that might look a whole lot like Earth.

No one will ever find a closer alien world than this. This is it. No other faint, cool stars lurk in the abyss between the Alpha Centauri system and our solar system. In a way, the first discovery of a possibly habitable planet in our backyard is also a final discovery. In the hunt for our cosmic neighbors, this planet is as good as it gets.

For now, the planet is unceremoniously called Proxima Centauri b. It zips around its namesake star every 11.2 days, and is likely locked in place—like the moon, which always shows the same face to Earth. It’s at least 1.3 times as massive as our planet, and based on its likely size, astronomers think it is rocky. Its home star is only .15 percent as bright as the sun, so the planet isn’t as scorched as you might expect, given its tight orbit. Instead, it circles around in a sweet spot that might allow for liquid water on its surface. “It’s in about the same position in the habitable zone of Proxima as the Earth is in the habitable zone around the sun,” says James Kasting, an astronomer at Penn State who was not involved in the new finding.

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The Guardian: US warns Europe over plan to demand millions in unpaid taxes from Apple

The US has warned the European commission that it will consider retaliating if Brussels goes ahead with plans to demand billions of dollars in unpaid taxes from Apple and other US multinational companies.

The Obama administration warned the EU on Wednesday that its investigations into alleged tax avoidance by US firms, including Apple, Amazon and Starbucks, could “create an unfortunate international tax policy precedent”. [...]

A US Senate investigation in 2013 found that Apple paid little or no tax on profits of at least $74bn over four years by exploiting gaps in the Irish and American tax code. The investigation found no evidence of illegal activity and both Apple and Ireland deny any wrongdoing.

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NBC News: Dream Team of Historians Proposed to Advise U.S. President

Professors Graham Allison and Niall Ferguson are calling on the next U.S. president to create a Council of Historical Advisers that would tackle present problems by looking to the past.

Trying to take down a terrorist group? The council would scour historical records to find similar groups, and then analyze which strategies worked against them.

Facing a financial crisis? The council would glean lessons from past meltdowns and report their findings to the president.

"I think there would be more than enough work for a council of applied historians," said Allison, a professor of government and director of Harvard's Belfer Center, a university think tank.

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Deutsche Welle: Judge says California museum can keep Nazi-looted art

The suit was brought by the family of the Jewish art dealer who owned the works when they were taken by the Nazis. Marei von Saher, daughter-in-law of the wife of the art dealer, Desi Goudstikker, argued that the two life-size oil-on-oil paintings should be returned.

The Norton Museum insisted that it had acquired the works legally from the descendant of an aristocrat who had the paintings stolen by the Soviet Union in the 1920s. [...]

In his ruling, Walter said that by deciding not to seek restitution for the paintings, Goudstikker abandoned his family's claims to the works. The judge's decision is a departure from other rulings involving art looted by the Nazis, many of which have been returned to the descendants of those who had the art stolen.

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