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Muslim American advocates and civil rights organizations are condemning comments presidential candidate Michael Bloomberg made defending the practice of surveilling Muslims in New York City when he was mayor.

It's the latest blowback Bloomberg's campaign for president has generated as his long history in the public eye dredges up former positions and remarks.

The organizers of the 2020 Tokyo Olympics pushed back on "speculation" that the novel coronavirus epidemic could lead to the cancellation of the Summer Games, after an IOC official appeared to suggest otherwise.

"Tokyo 2020 will continue to collaborate with all relevant organisations which carefully monitor any incidence of infectious diseases and will review any countermeasures that may be necessary with all relevant organisations," the local organizing committee said in a statement on Thursday.

"The rest is speculation," it said.

The U.S. Supreme Court agreed this week to dismiss the case of "D.C. sniper" Lee Boyd Malvo, who mounted a legal challenge to his life-without-parole sentence for a deadly 2002 shooting rampage he committed as minor.

In a sharp turn from the public apology he issued two days ago, opera star Plácido Domingo offered a new statement on Thursday regarding allegations of sexual misconduct against him.

Of the Universal classic monsters — Dracula, Frankenstein, The Wolf Man, The Mummy, et al. — The Invisible Man is by far the most destructive, the most psychotic, and, not coincidentally, the most recognizably human of them all. (As played by Claude Rains, he's also the wittiest.) When a man doesn't have to look at himself in the mirror, he divorces himself from the moral accountability that curbs his worst instincts.

As monstrous cinematic moguls go, Sir Richard McCreadie, CEO of many a failed British cut-rate clothing chain, is no Citizen Kane. Played with casual brio by Steve Coogan in Michael Winterbottom's genre-confounding Greed, Sir Richard is not what you'd call a brooder. To him, self-doubt — indeed introspection of any sort — is a loser's game.

The films of the Romanian New Wave are above all Romanian; most of them barely acknowledge a world outside the country's borders. The walloping beat of Iggy Pop's "The Passenger" immediately announces that The Whisperers is up to something different. So does the site of the opening scene: the Canary Islands.

The view from the mainland in coastal Georgia is mostly miles of salt marsh and barrier islands, shore birds hunting in the mud, shrimp boats traveling the Intracoastal Waterway.

Since September, from the coastal city of Brunswick, the view has also featured the Golden Ray.

The cargo ship capsized as it was leaving the Port of Brunswick, heading for Baltimore with 4,200 new cars on board. The cause is still under investigation.

Now, crews are beginning work to eventually remove the ship, but getting rid of such a giant wreck is complicated.

A song fuses words and music. Yet the human brain can instantly separate a song's lyrics from its melody.

And now scientists think they know how this happens.

A team led by researchers at McGill University reported in Science Thursday that song sounds are processed simultaneously by two separate brain areas – one in the left hemisphere and one in the right.

When kids at Warner Arts Magnet Elementary School act up, they aren't sent straight to the principal's office. Instead, many students at the high-poverty school in Nashville, Tenn., go to the "BeWell" room.

The serene space is awash in sunlight and brimming with plants. There are yoga mats, toys, a lounging nook and soothing music drifting out of a desk speaker. In this room, teacher Riki Rattner, who is also trained as a yoga instructor, helps students practice deep breathing and check in with their emotions.

In a decade, Harry Styles has gone from teenage heartthrob to a global pop star in his own right. As he's distanced himself from his adolescent years as a member of One Direction, he's become his own person, starring in the 2017 blockbuster Dunkirk, hosting Saturday Night Live and creating music that pulls from a variety of influences.

When President Trump announced Wednesday that Vice President Mike Pence would oversee the government effort to contain the fast-spreading coronavirus, he said the former Indiana governor "has a certain talent for this."

But not everyone agrees.

Pence's public health record, especially while he was governor, is now coming under harsh scrutiny.

This series is produced in collaboration with The Conversation. 

From an endless stream of political misinformation to inescapable lies on social media, are we living in a post-truth world?

Presidential candidate Tom Steyer describes himself as “a straight-up progressive,” ahead of the South Carolina primary, but he warns against nominating Bernie Sanders, whom he calls one of the field’s “extremes.”

Steyer has invested major campaign resources in South Carolina, where he’s showing more support than in other state and national polls. Former Vice President Joe Biden is expected to win the state’s primary on Saturday with the support of black voters, but Steyer has been making plays for those same votes.

Scotland is now a big step closer to becoming the first country in the world to make tampons and pads free to anyone who needs them.

The Period Products (Free Provision) (Scotland) Bill passed through the first of three stages in the Scottish Parliament on Tuesday by a vote of 112-0, with one abstention.

Updated at 3:45 p.m. ET

Italy's number of COVID-19 coronavirus cases spiked by more than 50% in just 24 hours and now stands at 650, the Italian Ministry of Health says, adding that 17 people have died from the respiratory virus. More than 400 of the cases are in the hard-hit Lombardy region, where some towns are under a lockdown.

The U.K. Court of Appeal dealt has dealt climate activists a big legal win, blocking plans for the addition of a third runway at London's Heathrow Airport, one of the busiest international hubs in the world. In its judgment Thursday, the three-justice panel concluded that the plans failed to satisfy the government's stated commitments on combating climate change.

American Jesse Appell headed to China on a Fulbright scholarship seven years ago. He set out to study traditional Chinese comedy method Xiangsheng, or “cross-talk,” as a disciple of Chinese comedy master Xiangsheng Ding Guangquan.

He still lives in China, where he regularly performs bilingual improv comedy and Chinese stand-up, live and on television. He also creates comedic videos for his Chinese fans.