For most of us, the word “algorithm” is fairly new to our vocabulary. But badly designed decision-making algorithms have a growing impact on our lives and can do a great deal of damage.

Nobody is ever fully prepared for natural disaster. When hurricanes, blizzards or tsunamis strike they always reveal weaknesses — failure to plan, failure to invest in precautions.

Rush Limbaugh, who died Wednesday at 70, was, to liberals, leftists and maybe to a good number of people in the political center, an agitator and showman at best, and, at worst, a lout, a loudmouth and a demagogue.

Ethiopia’s worsening civil war, which has already drawn in Eritrea and is now spilling over into Sudan, threatens to destabilize the entire Horn of Africa, with alarming humanitarian consequences. American leadership is urgently needed to restore peace.

As the pandemic throws millions of Americans out of work, cars line up for miles outside food banks across the country. COVID-19 did not create the crisis of hunger in the United States, but it has exposed its root cause. Hint: it’s not a shortage of food.

Dead at the age of 70 is the talented, tenacious and tremendously influential voice that more than any other built conservative talk radio. We don’t enjoy speaking ill of the recently deceased. May Rush Limbaugh, who suffered the ravages of lung cancer, rest in peace.

It was one thing for holiday gifts and Christmas cards to arrive a little late because of delays at the United States Postal Service. In fact, some people found it a bit amusing, and a little nice, to get a gift a month or more late and be to able extend the holiday cheer. What is no laughing matter is all the other heartache, inconvenience and threat to people’s livelihoods and health that backlogs in deliveries has caused. And there seems to be no end in sight to the troubles.

In what has become a national trend, state-level Republican Party leaders in North Carolina and Louisiana have censured, respectively, Republican Sens. Richard Burr and Bill Cassidy. Their offense? Accepting reality and standing up for democracy by voting to convict former President Donald Trump for inciting the deadly attack on the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6.