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The first thing you say when someone tells you their bad news determines where the rest of the conversation goes—and, sometimes, where the relationship goes. Responding in a less-than-ideal way can prompt your conversation partner to pull back and decide, “‘Well, I’m not going to bring that to you anymore,’” says Jenny Dreizen, an etiquette expert and the Scotland-based co-founder of Fresh Starts Registry, a website that offers dozens of scripts in order to provide words for moments that leave you at a loss. “We all get blank-page syndrome,” she says. “None of us know how to do this.”With that in mind, we asked Dreizen and other experts to share their favorite ways to respond to someone who’s sharing bad news, from the trivial to the unimaginable.“The disappointment is so real. I’m here to...

A second farmworker in the U.S. has tested positive for bird flu, public health officials from the patient’s home state of Michigan announced May 22. During a press conference, health officials said the case was “not unexpected,” given the ongoing spread of avian influenza among birds and mammals in the U.S., and that risk to the general public remains low. But the case raises the question: is human-to-human transmission of bird flu a serious concern?Not at this point, according to Dr. Nirav Shah, principal deputy director of the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC). “We have not seen evidence of other cases in this area or elsewhere in any of our monitoring systems, let alone any evidence of human-to-human transmission,” Shah said during the May 22 press briefing. “This i...

Extreme heat in Mexico, Central America and parts of the U.S. South has left millions of people in sweltering temperatures, strained energy grids and resulted in iconic Howler monkeys in Mexico dropping dead from trees.Meteorologists say the conditions have been caused by what some refer to as a heat dome — an area of strong high pressure centered over the southern Gulf of Mexico and northern Central America that blocked clouds from forming and caused extensive sunshine and hot temperatures. This extreme heat is occurring in a world that is quickly warming due to greenhouse gases, which come from the burning of fossil fuels like oil, gas and coal.The high temperatures are stretching across the Gulf of Mexico into parts of the United States including Texas and Florida. The heat comes as tho...

Wake me when it’s over—summer, that is. I know, I know, you just love it: the long days, the warm evenings, the trips to the beach, the afternoons at the ballpark when your favorite team is playing and the pennant race is tightening—and the temperature is skyrocketing, and your skin is blistering, and the beer is $6, and the drive home will be in 88° heat, which is fine if you don’t mind running the air conditioner, except that you’re burning through $4–a-gallon gas, because it’s summer-driving season and the giant oil companies didn’t get to be the giant oil companies without knowing the right time of year to hike their prices. And that’s hardly all of it. Summertime is the season of horribles, from higher crime rates, to increased warfare, to spikes in asthma, to raging wildfires, to swa...

As more than a trillion cicadas emerge from underground this month, experts warn that people on the autism spectrum or who are sensitive to sound may find the insects’ noise overwhelming.The large co-emergence of cicadas from both a 13-year and 17-year brood this spring is the first of its kind in more than 200 years. The emergence has already begun in some regions, and the cicadas will be visible in several states, including Illinois, Iowa, Georgia, and Tennessee. The emergence is expected to last until June.Read More: An Animated Guide to the Rare 2024 Cicada Co-EmergenceOnce they emerge, male cicadas sing a mating call to attract female cicadas. Because of the insects’ large presence, the continuous and high-pitched buzzing sound can be loud; the Centers for Disease Control and Preventi...