American teenagers would rather text their friends instead of speaking to them in person. And even if they do meet face-to-face, teens admit that social media often distracts them frompaying attention to the people they’re with.

ON THIS DAY IN AMERICAN HISTORY On September 12, 1992, Space Shuttle Endeavor launches from Cape Canaveral, Florida. It is the 50th Space Shuttle launch. The mission lasted nearly eight days and the crew consisted of the first African-American woman to go to space, the first married couple to share a mission as well as the first Japanese astronaut to fly aboard a Space Shuttle.

It is a scene playing out across America as the crucial Nov. 6 congressional elections edge closer – biting attack ads portraying Republican incumbent politicians as unworthy of re-election. Republicans are not without political ammunition in trying to defend their majorities in Congress .

Plans by South Africa’s government to change the law to allow land expropriation without compensation have provoked an emotional response, even reaching the ears of President Donald Trump, who signaled his disapproval last month in a controversial tweet in which he ordered U.S. officials to investigate the situation .

Emergency officials are urging millions of residents along the southeastern U.S. coast to finish preparations ahead of the onslaught of Hurricane Florence. The storm is expected to make landfall later this week, unleashing damaging winds andlife-threatening amounts of rain .

A U.S. pharmaceutical executive is defending his price boost of a key antibiotic by 400 percent to almost $2,400 a bottle as a “moral requirement,” a claim that drew an immediate rebuke from the country’s drug regulatory chief.