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(Dec 21, 2013 5:30 AM) The photo pretty much says it all: There is 94-year-old Clara Gantt weeping at the coffin of the husband who finally returned from the Korean War after more than six decades. Army Sgt. 1st Class Joseph E. Gantt was a field medic who was injured and captured in December 1950, and who was presumed to have died a few months later in a POW camp, recounts AP. But his remains were never identified, and Clara Gantt waited for him all this time. He told me if anything happened to him he wanted me to remarry, she said yesterday at Los Angeles International Airport. I told him no, no. Here I am, still his wife. The LA Times adds this detail: She bought a home in Inglewood after the war, but, knowing her husband hated yardwork, hired a gardener to maintain it so he wouldn't have to deal with it upon his return. I always did love my husband, she said. We was two of one kind, we loved each other. And that made our marriage complete.

(Sep 25, 2016 12:10 PM CDT) Karl Smith took the witness stand last week in Illinois and dropped a bomb on a Cook County courtroom as the twin brother he hadn't seen in years looked on: I'm here to confess to a crime I committed that he was wrongly accused of, Smith said. The part of the story that makes it especially dicey, reports the Chicago Tribune, is that Smith's identical twin, Kevin Dugar, has been jailed for the murder of a rival gang member since 2003. (The brothers have different last names because Smith adopted his mother's maiden name.) Authorities are skeptical, however. They say Smith is falsely confessing because he has exhausted his own appeal of a 99-year sentence for a 2008 home invasion and figures he may as well take the fall for his bother. Smith's got nothing to lose, an assistant state's attorney says, adding that the confession doesn't mesh with eyewitness accounts. Smith, though, says he let his brother sit in prison because I didn't have the strength to come forward and because I thought it was the job of the police to catch me. He contends that he decided to come forward after a religious conversion. A judge will decide if Dugar will get a new trial. Says Smith's mother: He wouldn't lie about that. The bizarre nature of the case is drawing widespread attention, with coverage in the American Bar Association's ABA Journal and oversesa outlets including ITV News ( shocking ) Australia's Perth Now ( stunning ). (In France, authorities struggled to figure out which twin was a rapist.)

(Oct 3, 2014 7:56 AM CDT) We saw what the AP terms a burst of hiring last month, with US employers adding 248,000 jobs and the unemployment rate dropping to its lowest level since July 2008--5.9%. Economists had expected 215,000 new jobs and the unemployment rate to hold at 6.1%, the Wall Street Journal reports. In more good news, today's jobs report also bumped up the estimates for July and August, adding a total of 69,000 more jobs to the previous estimates. As for that unemployment rate, it's close to what many economists consider a healthy level of 5.5%, the AP notes. But the drop is partially because nearly 100,000 people stopped looking for work last month. That means the labor-force participation rate is at 62.7%, the lowest proportion of Americans working or looking for work since February 1978. Before the recession, the rate was around 66%.

(May 5, 2016 9:11 AM CDT) Even Walter White knew not to sample the wares, a lesson that could have served Sonja Farak well. The now 37-year-old former chemist for the Massachusetts Department of Public Health and the Massachusetts State Police was arrested in 2013 and sentenced in 2014 to 18 months in jail for getting high on the job using drugs lifted from the Amherst lab where she worked, per NPR. But this week the full extent of her activities discovered during the state's investigation were released, and it wasn't just an occasional drug dalliance that caused her troubles: From 2005 to 2013, Farak was a heavy user of cocaine, LSD, and meth at the lab, among other drugs, and she even whipped up her own crack cocaine using lab supplies--which could call into question 30,000 cases she handled, per the New York Daily News. And throughout her entire binge, no one noticed a decline in her work, with one colleague even calling her meticulous and dedicated to her work. Farak's first experience with the lab's testing (aka standard ) drugs was with meth, which she admitted she tried one year into her Amherst stint out of curiosity, per the state AG's report; she researched the drug and thought, That's the one I am going to try if I am going to try it. She enjoyed the high and moved on to other drugs, including ones brought in by trafficking cops, after she ran through almost all of the lab's meth, trying coke, LSD, and a host of others. She narrowly avoided discovery during at least two visits from State Police, and co-workers finally started noticing her deteriorating appearance and persistent inquiries about drug deliveries. In 2013 drugs were discovered missing, and she pleaded guilty in 2014 to evidence tampering, larceny of controlled substances, and unlawful possession charges. This is a statewide scandal, and I think it's going to take an enormous toll on the system, Luke Ryan, a lawyer who reps some of the defendants whose samples Farak tested, tells the Boston Herald. (Feds say this chemist made millions off insider info.)

(Dec 5, 2015 9:21 AM) Recent mass shootings have moved the New York Times to put an editorial on its front page for the first time in nearly a century, calling it a moral outrage and a national disgrace that civilians can legally purchase weapons designed specifically to kill people with brutal speed and efficiency. The blistering editorial calls such firearms weapons of war, barely modified and deliberately marketed as tools of macho vigilantism and even insurrection and urges Americans to direct their anger at the leaders are supposed to keep them safe but place more importance on the money and political power of an industry dedicated to profiting from the unfettered spread of ever more powerful firearms. The Times says that instead of just stopping the spread of firearms, it is time to talk about eliminating some large categories of weapons and ammunition, like the slightly modified combat rifles used in the San Bernardino shootings. It is possible to define those guns in a clear and effective way, the Times writes, and, yes, it would require Americans who own those kinds of weapons to give them up for the good of their fellow citizens. The Guardian reports that this is the first front-page Times editorial since 1920, when it expressed astonishment and dismay at the nomination of Warren G. Harding for president. Times publisher Arthur Sulzberger Jr., says the paper wanted to show frustration and anguish about our country's inability to come to terms with the scourge of guns.

(Jun 3, 2011 3:20 PM CDT) One of Hollywood's greatest sheriffs, James Arness, died today of natural causes at his home, the Los Angeles Times reports. At 6-foot-7, Arness dominated TV screens as Marshal Matt Dillon on Gunsmoke, which ran from 1955 to 1975 and defined the TV Western. Arness had been wary about taking a TV role because he was afraid of losing his chance to be in movies. It was John Wayne who pushed Arness to become Marshal Dillon and who introduced him to the show's viewers: I knew there was only one man to play in it, said Wayne. I've worked with him, and I predict he'll be a big star. Arness was born in Minneapolis in 1923, three years prior to his brother actor, the late Peter Graves. He got drafted by the Army and served in World War II but was honorably discharged after an encounter with a German machine gun nest left him seriously injured, with one leg a little shorter than the other. Back in the US, he eventually studied acting under the GI bill. He is survived by his second wife, Janet, and two sons.

(Jan 22, 2009 6:34 AM) Pakistani police have arrested an al-Qaeda suspect believed to have links to the 2005 London transit bombings, acting on a tip from the US. Zabi ul Taifi, a Saudi national, was among seven al-Qaeda suspects caught in a raid near Peshawar, reports the AP. An unmanned spy plane and three helicopters hovered over the area during the raid, while US intelligence agents watched the capture from a nearby car. Pakistan's interior minister said the police had caught high value targets, but declined to confirm that Taifi was linked to the 7/7 attacks, which killed 52 people when bombs exploded on three Underground trains and a bus. But another official said, We have reasons to believe that we got the right man who had played a role in the 2005 attacks in London.

(Mar 7, 2014 9:30 AM) Mark Wahlberg is the latest male celebrity to lose a drastic amount of weight for a movie role, the San Jose Mercury News reports, citing an interview the actor gave to People. I started at 196 and got down to 135 while filming The Gambler, in which he plays a professor struggling with addiction, Wahlberg said. I began with a liquid diet. Then I completely changed my training program and gave up wine, bread, and pasta. Now I'm eating small portions of protein throughout the day and jumping rope a lot. The movie is out next year; you can see a thinner Wahlberg in a photo from last month here. (One columnist's take on actors starving themselves for roles: obscene.

(May 8, 2018 9:06 AM CDT) Berlin police say three baby girls found abandoned in and around the German capital in recent years are siblings. The first newborn was discovered in Berlin in September 2015, the second in August the following year, and the third in the nearby village of Schwanebeck in August 2017. Berlin police said Tuesday that DNA tests on the girls showed they have the same mother and likely the same father, per the AP. Police are appealing for information that might help them find the mother because she endangered the children's lives by not using one of Berlin's baby boxes, which allow women to give up their babies anonymously and alert medics to the presence of the infant. All three babies survived abandonment and now live with foster families.

(May 2, 2014 1:55 AM CDT) A Massachusetts town has decided it's time to finally lift a ban on arcade games it established when Ms. Pac-Man was new. At a town meeting, the residents of Marshfield voted 203-175 to lift the ban that was introduced in 1982 and went almost all the way to the Supreme Court when business owners challenged it (the court declined to take on the case), reports the Patriot Ledger. The ban was voted in by residents who feared arcade games would bring an undesirable element to the small town and upheld in 1994 and 2011. This is a progressive step in that it protects life in a small town from an urban-type honky-tonk environment, one resident told the Christian Science Monitor at the time. The fewer distractions of that type, the easier it is to transfer my ideas and values to my youngster. The ban was successfully challenged by a resident who says he found it unjust even when he was in the fourth grade. I was sitting thinking, 'Why is this illegal in my town, to have fun with my friends,' he says, recalling a visit to an arcade in a neighboring town. Six business owners say they are considering installing games, and while it's not clear whether they plan to bring in games from the decades the town missed, Chris Taylor at Mashable would love it if Marshfield suddenly went hog wild and became a town filled with retro gaming devices. If it becomes the arcade town that time forgot, well, praise the Pac-Man and pass the quarters, he writes.

(Aug 19, 2009 1:14 PM CDT) Hungary is celebrating the 20th anniversary today of its Pan-European Picnic : the day it opened its border with Austria, providing a pathway for hundreds of East Germans to exit Europe's communist east. The Soviet bloc was like an air balloon with over-pressure so it needed only a prick of the needle, and we were holding this needle, one organizer tells the BBC. The tidal wave resulted just months later in the opening of the Berlin Wall. The Picnic gave hope to millions of citizens for a Europe whole and free, said the European Commission's president. It speaks volumes of the power of the human spirit and of courageous people, who did not merely 'talk the talk' but truly 'walked the walk'--the walk to freedom, democracy, and European solidarity.

(May 11, 2010 7:04 AM CDT) As a White House adviser in 1997, Supreme Court nominee Elena Kagan urged then-President Bill Clinton to support a ban on late-term abortions, a political compromise that put the administration at odds with abortion rights groups, according to documents reviewed by the AP. Kagan told Clinton that if he didn't ban all abortions on viable fetuses, except when the physical health of the mother was in danger, he'd risk having the Republican-led Congress override his veto on an even stricter ban. The documents from Clinton's presidential library are among the first to surface in which Kagan weighs in on the thorny issue of abortion. But judges confront issues differently than staff attorneys for an administration, a White House spokesman cautioned. Indeed, the memo is more of a political calculation than a legal brief, but Kagan and her boss Bruce Reed urged Clinton to support the compromise despite noting that the Justice Department believed the proposal was unconstitutional.

(Nov 17, 2008 11:21 AM) Hillary Clinton and Sarah Palin shattered the glass ceiling in politics, but the broken shards sharply undercut the feminist movement. In the grand Passion play that was this election, both Clinton and Palin came to represent--and, at times, reinforce--two of the most pernicious stereotypes that are applied to women: the bitch and the ditz, Amanda Fortini writes in New York. By stepping into the spotlight unprepared, Palin reinforced some of the most damaging and sexist ideas of all, writes Fortini. Before Palin's nomination, 7 in 10 Americans thought men and women could lead effectively. Exit polls later showed 6 in 10 voters thought Palin was unqualified to step in for John McCain. I can't help but think that our historic step forward was followed by more than a few in the opposite direction, Fortini says.

(Oct 17, 2013 6:58 PM CDT) The US Justice Department today brought fresh charges against four former Blackwater Worldwide security contractors, resurrecting an internationally charged case over a deadly 2007 shooting on the streets of Baghdad. A new jury indictment charges the men in a shooting that inflamed anti-American sentiment in Iraq and heightened diplomatic sensitivities amid an ongoing war. The men were hired to guard US diplomats. The guards are accused of opening fire in busy Nisoor Square on Sept. 16, 2007. Seventeen Iraqi civilians died, including women and children. Prosecutors say the heavily armed Blackwater convoy used machine guns and grenades in an unprovoked attack. Defense lawyers argue their clients are innocent men who were ambushed by Iraqi insurgents. The guards were charged with manslaughter and weapons violations in 2008, but a federal judge the following year dismissed the case, ruling the Justice Department withheld evidence from a grand jury and violated the guards' constitutional rights. The dismissal outraged many Iraqis, who said it showed Americans consider themselves above the law. Vice President Joe Biden, speaking in Baghdad in 2010, expressed his personal regret for the shootings. A federal appeals court reinstated the case in 2011, saying now-retired Judge Ricardo Urbina had wrongly interpreted the law. Prosecutors again presented evidence before a grand jury, and US District Judge Royce Lamberth gave the Justice Department until Monday to decide what to do with the case.

(Mar 24, 2014 8:46 AM CDT) Monday marked the first formal act of remembrance held in the name of the World War II prisoners who participated in the Great Escape, the famed March 24, 1944, breakout from German POW camp Stalag Luft III that saw only three men make it to freedom. The other 73 who broke out using a 336-foot-long tunnel code-named Harry were recaptured, and 50 were executed at the command of Adolf Hitler. The Telegraph uses the occasion to speak with a man it says is one of two remaining survivors from that night: Dick Churchill. Churchill, 94, was not one of the three to make it to freedom--those men died in the '90s, reports the BBC. He worked as a digger on the tunnel, and had learned a few Romanian phrases in an effort to lend credence to the Romanian papers he had been given. He and his partner, Bob Nelson, were among the last 30 or so men to exit through the tunnel, with plans to head some 50 miles to the Czechoslovakia border. They traveled through snowy conditions for two nights before seeking shelter in a barn. But Germans had ordered all barns within a hundred miles of the camp to be searched. They removed all the hay gradually and when they got into the far corner, the pitch forks being dangerously close, they found us, says Churchill. He was imprisoned with the other captured escapees, 50 of whom were gradually removed from the cells to be killed. Why was Churchill spared? I think it was my name. I'm pretty certain. I'm not related to Churchill, to my knowledge. But they thought I might be. (Click to read about the man who was the key forger in the escape--but chose to stay behind.)

(Oct 13, 2015 6:40 PM CDT) You probably don't need another reason to hate your cable provider, but here's one anyway: The average customer's bill in 2015 is nearly $42 higher than in 2010, NBC News reports. That's an increase of 35%, according to market research firm SNL Kagan, which says bundling TV, Internet, and phone services might be costing customers even more. People with bundled services are the steadiest customers cable companies have left as more young people decide to cut the cord. It's a fact not lost on the companies themselves. The quickest way for cable companies to grow their revenue is charge more to the customers they already have, one industry analyst tells NBC. Ultimately, this may prove counterproductive. This increase in costs coincides with increasing worries on the part of cable companies, NBC reports. The number of customers getting bundled services dropped for the first time in 2014. And only 47% of adults under 25 have bundled services. Sadly cost increases don't also mean improved services, thanks to cable company monopolies around the country. According to NBC, Internet service is more expensive in the US than Europe while speeds in major American cities lag far behind those in Seoul, Hong Kong, Paris, and more. Just something to remember if the next bill from your cable provider has suddenly climbed north of $160.

(May 1, 2008 3:47 PM CDT) Barbara Walters has revealed she had a long affair in the 1970s with Edward Brooke, America's first elected black senator. In a bombshell admission on a forthcoming episode of Oprah, the grande dame of TV anchors says the married Brooke--a moderate Massachusetts Republican who served in 1967-79--was exciting and brilliant, the AP reports. Walters, 78, said she and Brooke hid the affair until now to protect their careers; one friend told her at the time, This is going to ruin him. You've got to break this off. Asked by Oprah if she and the senator were in love, Walters responded, I was certainly, I don't know, I was certainly infatuated. Brooke, now 88, has since divorced and remarried.

(Mar 23, 2012 1:32 PM CDT) For eight decades, Oswald the Lucky Rabbit hasn't been so lucky: The early Disney character has long been relegated to cartoon history. Now, he's finally making a return appearance, starring alongside his world-famous big-eared buddy Mickey in a video game, reports Wired. Disney Epic Mickey: The Power of Two features the two characters working as a team to defend the world of Wasteland, full of lost Disney characters and places. Oswald, once a silent character, is even getting a voice for the first time in what designer Warren Spector calls the first musical comedy game ever. Oswald also popped up several months back in a rediscovered 1928 cartoon found in a British movie archive; Disney bought the film for more than $31,000. Hardly anyone outside the company has seen it yet, but it's due for a public showing this month.

(Nov 14, 2011 11:51 AM) REM's break-up, announced in September, wasn't a snap decision. The band had been talking about it during its 2008 tour, Michael Stipe tells Salon in a lengthy sit-down. The decision came about quite organically, like most things in REM, he says. By the end of that tour--which became their last-- we all kind of knew that these were most likely going to be our last shows. It was already, for us, bittersweet and weird and hard. He says the thought of not performing live again is actually painful to think about, but the band didn't want to leave things open-ended because the members needed closure in order to move forward with new projects. Why not do a farewell tour? The idea of doing some kind of victory lap ... just felt--and still feels--like it would have been completely mercenary and exploitative and impossible, Stipe says. Not to mention emotional for the band: I could not perform 'Everybody Hurts' for the last time in London with 30,000 people in the room or 80,000 people on the field knowing full well it was the last time we were going to do it. I just couldn't. I would collapse. The entire interview--in which Stipe also muses over why Collapse Into Now is the perfect final album, and discusses the upcoming career-spanning collection--is worth a read.

(Jul 28, 2009 7:18 AM CDT) The Federal Reserve is the least trusted of all federal agencies, a new Gallup poll finds. Just 30% of respondents said the Fed was doing a good or excellent job, giving it the lowest score out of nine agencies included in the poll. That's a steep decline from the 53% who gave it high marks in 2003, the last time the poll was conducted. The Centers for Disease Control, meanwhile, earned top marks, with 61% approving of its work, followed by NASA and the FBI with 58% apiece. The CIA and Homeland Security got middling scores, with a little under half of respondents approving of their work. The EPA, IRS, and FDA brought up the rear, with 42%, 40%, and 38% ratings respectively.

(Dec 1, 2008 8:24 PM) The US can expect a terrorist attack using nuclear or more likely biological weapons before 2013, reports a bipartisan commission in a study being briefed tomorrow to Vice President-elect Joe Biden. It suggests the Obama administration bolster efforts to counter and prepare for germ warfare by terrorists. Our margin of safety is shrinking, not growing, states the report, obtained by the AP. It is scheduled to be publicly released Wednesday. The commission is also encouraging the new White House to appoint one official to coordinate US intelligence and foreign policy on combating the spread of nuclear and biological weapons. The United States should be less concerned that terrorists will become biologists and far more concerned that biologists will become terrorists, the report states.

(Jan 29, 2014 11:18 PM) American TV viewers chose to skip President Obama's State of the Union address en masse. The address pulled in just 33.3 million viewers, the lowest since Bill Clinton's final SOTU address in 2000, when there were 35 million fewer Americans, the Hollywood Reporter finds. The ratings were just a little down from the 33.5 million who watched Obama's SOTU address last year, but still well above the 31.5 million who watched Clinton in 2000. MSNBC and CNN saw big drops in viewer numbers year-on-year, but Fox--by far the most-watched network for the address--managed to gain a big rise in viewer numbers to 4.7 million, up 25% from last year, Mediaite reports. But there's one still one loser at Fox: Bill O'Reilly, who confidently predicted that his pre-address show would be watched by more Fox viewers than Obama's speech. His audience numbers were pretty healthy, but his prediction was off by more than a million viewers.

(Aug 20, 2015 11:05 AM CDT) If you lost some water weight in July, you can probably credit the blazing temperatures: Last month was the hottest month the planet has seen since record keeping began in 1880, according to the NOAA. The combined average temperature over land and sea reached 61.86 degrees, 1.46 degrees above the 20th-century average and 0.036 degrees above the next hottest month: July 2011, reports USA Today. This July also marked the 365th consecutive month with an above-average global temperature. Speaking of extreme weather, CNN reports that the first Category 1 hurricane of the season, Danny, has formed and could make landfall in the Leeward Islands and Puerto Rico next week.

(Dec 6, 2013 10:39 AM) Before Columbine, Virginia Tech, Aurora, and Newtown, there was the Long Island Rail Road. On Dec. 7, 1993, a gunman opened fire on a train car filled with commuters leaving New York City. By the time passengers tackled Colin Ferguson, his fusillade had left six people dead and 19 wounded. Though other massacres have far superseded it in terms of casualties, there are aspects of the railcar shooting that, even two decades later, make it stand out in the sad pantheon of rampages that have horrified the nation. In a mall or a school or a movie theater, there is at least some opportunity for hiding or escaping, says a criminology professor at Northeastern University. These people had nowhere to go. And then there was the trial. Ferguson defended himself in court, cross-examining the very people he terrorized. Ferguson, who boarded the train in Queens, claimed that he waited to open fire until the train crossed over the New York City border out of respect for David Dinkins, the mayor at the time. He fired methodically over several minutes, reloading at least once, before the train arrived at the next station, where terrified survivors ran screaming from the exits. The AP has more on where some of the survivors are now; as for Ferguson, he is eligible for parole in 2309.

(Sep 26, 2013 11:28 AM CDT) Michael Moses Ward, one of two survivors of the 1985 bombing of the militant group MOVE in a Philadelphia neighborhood and the only child to make it out alive, has died at 41. Ward died aboard a cruise ship in the Caribbean, say Florida medical examiners. His body was found in a hot tub last week, apparently drowned, an investigator says. Ward was 13 and known as Birdie Africa when Philadelphia police, trying to dislodge MOVE from its fortified inner-city compound, dropped explosives on the roof. The bombing killed five children and six adult members of the group, including Ward's mother, and ignited a fire that destroyed 61 row homes. After escaping, the teenager went to live with his father, Andino Ward, who changed his son's name. Michael, who later served in the Army, had been doing well lately, Andino Ward tells the AP. Michael and his siblings had treated their father to the cruise. Andino called the death very, very strange. He worked out every day and was very particular about what he put in his body. Officials are awaiting the results of a toxicology test before determining the cause and manner of death.

(Aug 12, 2015 7:00 AM CDT) Roughly 7 million Americans who are waking up with health insurance today woke up without it last year. That from a new report by the CDC's National Center for Health Statistics issued today that estimates the number of Americans without coverage has fallen from 36 million in 2014 to 29 million in Q1 of this year; that latter figure is the equivalent of 9.2% of Americans. The New York Times reports that in 2013, right before ObamaCare's major provisions kicked in, the percentage was 14.4%. As for the makeup of that 9.2%, 13% of adults 18-64 are without coverage, while just 4.6% of children are, down from 13.9% in 1997. As a policy-neutral research organization, lead author Robin Cohen tells USA Today the report doesn't delve into any reasons behind the drop. But an expert on the subject with the Kaiser Family Foundation puts it plainly: The biggest thing that's going on is the [Affordable Care Act]. Another health care policy expert sees a different factor: employment. In general, we should fully expect this in an economy that's slowly recovering. Interesting side note: The Times points to a separate Gallup study this week that found only one state--Texas--has a population that is at least 20% without insurance; in 2013 at least 14 states fell into that category.

(Nov 24, 2011 4:32 AM) Some 33 years after five boys went missing, a man charged in their deaths has been acquitted. Lee Evans, who was arrested last year, was found not guilty on all counts, but there was no jumping up and down or hooting and hollering. That type of feeling wasn't there, he says. The mysterious disappearance of the boys--who were never heard from again after all five were due to meet with Evans, who sometimes employed them--was followed by a bizarre trial, the New York Times reports. Evans' cousin, an inmate, said in 2008 he had watched Evans force the boys into a closet of an abandoned home, nail it shut, and burn the house down to punish the teens for stealing his pot. An emotional Evans, who didn't trust anyone but himself for the majority of his defense, pointed out holes in the story. Meanwhile, the judge frequently accused prosecutors of unfair tactics. Ultimately, the jury didn't think Evans could be called guilty beyond a reasonable doubt. But, Evans points out, when somebody buries you with dirt and mud and concrete, and somebody says, 'No, you didn't do it,' they already threw the mud and dirt.

(Aug 19, 2008 10:25 AM CDT) Wholesale prices jumped 1.2% in July--more than twice the rate economists expected and the fastest pace in 27 years, according to government data released today, the AP reports. Core prices, which exclude food and energy, rose 0.7%, the biggest since November 2006; new home construction in July fell to the lowest pace in more than 17 years. The dismal report follows on the heels of last week's consumer price report; July showed a 0.8% uptick with record per-barrel oil costs and $4.11 per gallon gasoline. The price spikes across the broader economy raised concerns that energy costs are pressuring all corners of the market and that the Federal Reserve might have to raise interest rates to stem inflation even in a flagging economic climate.

(Oct 13, 2008 7:01 AM CDT) Barack Obama continues to rise in the polls just as John McCain falls, with the latest numbers giving the Democrat a 10-point lead over his opponent, reports the Washington Post. Voters also gave Obama a clear lead on taxes and leadership for the first time in the election. McCain, meanwhile, is seen as too focused on attacking Obama, and is losing support even among his base. Pollsters note that mid-October leads don't guarantee victory, but closing such a large gap this late in the game would be unprecedented. McCain must also contend with a shrinking number of swing voters and rock-bottom approval ratings for George W. Bush--whose policies McCain has been linked to by 51% of voters. The embattled candidate did manage to gain ground on the question of his trustworthiness.

(May 18, 2014 12:17 PM CDT) In the 1970s, six people confessed to killing two men in Iceland, apparently explaining the victims' mysterious 1974 disappearances and ending what the justice minister called the nation's nightmare. But the suspects, who were all convicted--with one sentenced to life in prison--at first didn't seem to remember the killings. During their interrogations, they were subjected to long periods of solitary confinement; one had his head dipped in water and faced drowning threats, while another received daily psychiatric drugs, the BBC reports. Forty years later, the confessions are being investigated again. Photos show suspects were prompted to re-enact their alleged crimes, a process that can cause suspects to develop false memories and thus contaminates the entire case, says a former detective and expert on false memories. Meanwhile, diaries from two of the convicts point toward innocence: This is a diary that an innocent man is keeping in here regarding a big case that he is wrongly accused for, wrote Tryggvi Leifsson, who was in solitary confinement for 655 days. I can't remember anything and I'm losing my mind, wrote Gudjon Skarphedinsson. Now, it's up to the state prosecutor to decide whether the cases should be sent to Iceland's supreme court; if they are, the convictions could ultimately be thrown out. Click to read the BBC's very lengthy story in full.

(Mar 6, 2016 2:03 PM) Thanks to cell phone cameras, celebrities are photographed and videoed stumbling out of Hollywood restaurants and clubs after having a few too many margaritas on a near-regular basis. However, in a few instances, wasted celebrities make a spectacle of themselves in some very peculiar ways: Click for 21 more instances of drunk celebrities behaving badly.

(Apr 16, 2008 8:45 AM CDT) Foreclosures and a glut of unsold homes flooding the market were blamed for an 11.9% drop in new housing starts last month, more than twice the slide economists had predicted, reports Bloomberg. Starts are at the lowest level since March 1991, according to the Commerce Department, casting a pall over hope for a rapid economic recovery. Home construction is probably going to continue to fall right through this year,'' says one economist.

(May 2, 2009 11:12 PM CDT) So how do you replace an oracle? By splitting the job into pieces. Warren Buffett told a record gathering of 35,000 Berkshire Hathaway shareholders that he's got three internal candidates who could easily replace him as chief executive, the Financial Times reports. The 78-year-old also has four candidates to take over what would be a new post as chief investment officer. Trouble is, none of the four beat the S&P 500 with their investments last year. In terms of 2008 by itself, you would not say that they covered themselves with glory, said Buffett, who still has no immediate plans to retire. But I didn't cover myself in glory either in 2008. Buffett acknowledged that his own bad bets--in particular an investment in ConocoPhillips--helped produce the worst year in company history. Though Buffett held forth on his usual range of topics, the succession issue seemed to be the primary concern of shareholders this year.

(May 24, 2012 12:35 PM CDT) NASA wants to put humans into Mars' orbit by 2033, with the goal of having astronauts return to Earth with a canister of Mars rocks that would have been collected earlier and put into orbit. The goal was unveiled this week by an internal NASA study group working on the agency's Mars program with the goal of finding ways for NASA's human and robotic sides to integrate their work. Some at NASA are concerned, considering it's more difficult and more expensive to get humans to Mars than robots. On Nature's news blog, Eric Hand writes that this is the first articulation I've seen of a specific, shared date for the key goal of both the human and robotic sides, though the Obama administration has mentioned getting humans near Mars by around that same timeframe.

(Aug 28, 2013 4:13 PM CDT) The price of oil climbed to its highest in more than two years today as the US edged closer to taking action against Syria. Benchmark oil for October delivery rose $1.09, or 1%, to $110.10 a barrel on the New York Mercantile Exchange. That's its highest closing price since May 3, 2011. Oil has surged 27% since touching a low for the year of $86.68 on April 17. Political unrest in the Middle East and the threat of US intervention in Syria's civil war have been big factors behind the price increase. Traders are concerned that the violence could spread to more important oil-exporting countries or disrupt major oil transport routes.

(Mar 5, 2012 7:10 PM) Rick Santorum has criticized Mitt Romney for flip-flopping on health care, but it turns out Santorum once supported government involvement in health care himself--in his own words, to alter that marketplace to make it work better. Santorum gave an interview during a heated senatorial campaign in 1993 in which he expressed a philosophy that extended beyond the health care issue: I take a much more proactive position in government in solving problems than most Republicans, because I believe government has a role. Santorum said he even approached the first President Bush in 1991, telling him that health care was gonna be the big issue and that we had to take responsibility for trying to solve this problem. Mother Jones, which dug up the interview transcript, notes that Santorum now depicts himself as anti- Obamacare hardliner who (as he put it) was always for having the government out of the health care business. The Santorum camp didn't respond to requests for comment.

(Jan 3, 2015 12:31 PM) Fifteen years after allegedly helping al-Qaeda plot the 1998 bombings of US embassies in Kenya and Tanzania, Abu Anas al-Libi parked his car on a quiet street in Libya's capital. Within moments, soldiers from the US Army's elite Delta Force forced him at gunpoint into a van and sped away. They'd fly him to a naval ship in the Mediterranean Sea before finally bringing him to New York to stand trial on charges of helping kill 224 people, including a dozen Americans, and wound more than 4,500. But al-Libi, who pleaded innocent to the charges against him, wouldn't live to see his trial start Jan. 12. He died last night at a New York hospital of complications stemming from a recent liver surgery, his wife and authorities said today. He was 50. Al-Libi, once wanted by the FBI with a $5 million bounty on his head, was chronically ill with hepatitis C when the soldiers seized him. In a federal court filing today, US Attorney Preet Bharara said al-Libi died after being taken from New York's Metropolitan Correctional Center to a local hospital. Al-Libi, which means of Libya in Arabic, was his nom de guerre. US prosecutors in 2000 described al-Libi as sitting on a council that approved terrorist operations for al-Qaeda, which would become infamous worldwide a year later after the Sept. 11 terror attacks.

(Sep 5, 2015 4:15 PM CDT) Good news, holiday travelers: While you're stuck in Labor Day traffic, you'll be spending less on gas than you have since 2004, the New York Times reports. Yesterday, the national average gas price was $2.42 per gallon. That's nine cents less than last week and more than $1 less than a year ago. In fact, a gallon of gas can be had for less than $2 at more than 8,000 gas stations around the country this weekend. Consumers will feel a lot better at the pump this holiday than they will looking at their 401(k)'s, an industry analyst tells the Times. The Hill reports this weekend's affordable gas is the result of falling oil prices from a slowing global economy and the expectation of new oil from Iran after sanctions are lifted.

(Aug 11, 2008 4:59 PM CDT) Michael Phelps is gunning for a record eight gold medals at the Beijing Games, but the one that would mean the most is in the 200-meter freestyle, his hometown Baltimore Sun reports. He insisted on competing in the event at the 2004 Athens Olympics, and it was the only individual event he lost. I wanted to be in that race, says Phelps, who finished third behind Australia's Ian Thorpe. That was probably his best race, recalls his coach. It just kind of goes to show how Michael has a different view of things than most people. Phelps now holds the world record in the 200 free and is the favorite in tonight's final.

(Jul 11, 2008 5:06 AM CDT) The teen pregnancy rate increased in 2006 for the first time since 1991, reports CNN. Officials from the National Institutes of Health aren't sure if the 2.8% increase in the number of teen moms is a blip or the start of a trend, but the figures are a red flag that something has gone wrong, one expert told Bloomberg. Babies born to teens tend to have lower birth rates and more health and behavior problems, and their moms are less likely to finish high school. Some observers speculated that pregnancies of high-profile teens like Jamie Lynn Spears will continue to have an impact. Scenarios that were once considered taboo are applauded today, said a doctor. There seems to be less of a stigma for young girls.''

(Aug 2, 2009 7:14 AM CDT) The remains of the first American lost in the 1991 Persian Gulf War have been found in Iraq, the military said today. The disappearance of Navy Capt. Michael Scott Speicher has bedeviled investigators since his fighter jet was shot down on the first night of the war. He was positively identified through a jawbone found at the site and dental records. Several Iraqis said they remembered the crash and that Bedouins had buried his remains. The Pentagon initially declared Speicher killed, but uncertainty--and the lack of remains--led officials over the years to change his official status a number of times to missing in action and later missing-captured. The 2003 invasion led to a number of leads, including what some believed were the initials MSS scratched into the wall of an Iraqi prison.

(Sep 25, 2014 7:05 AM CDT) Mass shootings really are on the rise, according to a new FBI report. There has been an average of nearly one mass shooting a month in America this century and the rate has risen dramatically in recent years, the report released yesterday says. The agency says it identified a total of 160 active shooter incidents--defined as an individual actively engaged in killing or attempting to kill people in a populated area --since 2000, and found most happened in a matter of minutes, and around two-thirds of them were over before police arrived, reports the Wall Street Journal. There were an average of 6.4 mass shootings a year between 2000 and 2006, not including gang violence and domestic incidents, but the rate soared to an average of 16.4 a year between 2007 and 2013, according to the report, which the FBI says aims to help law enforcement agencies prevent, prepare for, respond to, and recover from these incidents. A total of 486 people were killed and 557 wounded in the incidents, notes the New York Times, not including the shooters, 40% of whom committed suicide. Only six of the shooters were women. At a briefing yesterday, an FBI behavioral analyst said that many shooters have a real or perceived deeply held personal grievance and the only remedy that they can perceive for that grievance is an act of catastrophic violence against a person or an institution, CNN reports. Chillingly, he explained that the copycat phenomenon is real and there appear to be a growing number of compromised and marginal individuals who are seeking inspiration from these past attacks.

(Mar 7, 2009 10:27 AM) If you've been waiting for a housing recovery, keep waiting. This March-June, the season when most homes are typically bought and sold, promises to be the worst since the bubble burst in 2006, the New York Times reports. Some 19 million homes--nearly one of every seven nationwide--are vacant, but only 6 million are currently for sale, meaning prices, already down 50% in recent years, are in for a crushing wave of supply. This week brought yet more bad data for sellers: One in every nine mortgages is delinquent or in foreclosure, and sales of previously owned homes fell at their fastest pace in two years. You are really looking at a very, very ugly outlook, said the head of one housing research firm. Prices are likely to keep on falling into 2010.

(Mar 31, 2008 4:43 AM CDT) Barack Obama jumped to his largest national lead of the year in a new Gallup poll, pulling ahead of Hillary Clinton 52% to 42%. The figure marks the Illinois senator's third consecutive lead, and the first double-digit lead since Hillary chalked up a 11% lead over Barack in early February. Obama appears to have weathered the controversy over his link to firebrand preacher Jeremiah Wright; Clinton has been hurt by the flap over her misstatement that she dodged sniper fire during a 1996 Bosnia trip and pressure by some prominent Democrats to drop out of the race, reports the Chicago Tribune. GOP contender John McCain leads Clinton by 4% and Obama by 3% in the Gallup poll.

(Dec 24, 2013 1:15 PM) A San Francisco man who went to prison decades ago as a burglar has now been convicted of raping and murdering a woman in 1991. Otis Hughes, 61, was imprisoned for burglary after the death of Karen Wong, whose apartment appeared to have been ransacked, police said. After he was released in 2008, a DNA sample he provided was matched with evidence at the scene, the San Francisco Chronicle reports. That led to the jury's conviction yesterday; Hughes could be sentenced to life in prison without parole. He plans to appeal the verdict. Prosecutors said the situation fit a pattern: Hughes would enter homes through unlocked windows or doors when victims were in; then he would pick up a knife found in the kitchen, they said. Hughes' defense noted that he had never been accused of an actual attack. Hughes' public defender said the pair may have had consensual sex and that Wong's boyfriend, who, according to her diary, had a temper, was probably the killer.

(Dec 31, 2012 9:46 AM) A book a day, every day, from tomorrow to next New Year's Eve: Sounds impossible, right? Well, Jeff Ryan managed it in 2012--without giving up his job or his family duties, he writes in Slate. Of course, he tweaked the rules a little; some days, he wouldn't have time to read, but he'd make up for that by reading multiple books later--often at the same time. By the end of today, he will have read 366 books this year. Want to mimic Ryan's resolution but not sure how to tackle it? It's not just about reading short books (though that helps), he explains. The key is to avoid min-maxing : That is, dropping all your other activities to focus on one. Instead, make reading your go-to activity for every free moment: Drop music for audiobooks in the car and while mowing the lawn, and forget about guilty-pleasure movies. But go for guilty-pleasure books (erotica, Star Wars novels) as well as meaty tomes. Still daunted? Consider this: Right now, you are probably reading a comparable amount to me--but you're reading newspapers, Facebook and Twitter, and the work of the fine folks at Slate. Read more on his quest.

(Jul 26, 2017 5:31 PM CDT) The world's tiniest violin might not be enough to express one man's loss, allegedly at the hands of his ex-wife. The Japan Times reports 34-year-old Midori Kawamiya was arrested Tuesday, accused of destroying her ex-husband's $950,000 violin collection in 2014 as the two were divorcing. Authorities say Kawamiya admitted to breaking into Daniel Olsen Chen's apartment in Nagoya but denied destroying his collection, which the BBC reports was comprised of 54 violins and 70 bows. Kawamiya, a Chinese national, was arrested this week--more than three years after the alleged crime--when she returned to Japan from China. The 62-year-old Chen, who both collects and builds violins, says it will probably take him the rest of his life to repair his collection, the Violin Channel reports. The most valuable of the destroyed violins--said to be worth nearly $450,000 on its own--is believed to have been a Nicola Amati instrument from Italy. (The saga of a Stradivarius stolen in 1980s ends on a high note.)

(Feb 8, 2016 9:06 AM) Two days after a powerful earthquake shook southern Taiwan, at least four more survivors have been pulled from the rubble of a collapsed 17-story apartment building in Tainan, the AP reports. A woman who called out Here I am! was found under the body of her husband, while rescuers also discovered a 42-year-old man and a 28-year-old Vietnamese woman. An 8-year-old girl was also pulled to safety. She is awake, but looks dehydrated, lost some temperature, the Tainan mayor says. I asked her if there's anything wrong with her body. She shook her head. The death toll is currently hovering at just under 40, but more than 100 people are still missing, per Reuters. So far, at least 170 survivors have been pulled from the wreckage of the building, which the Miami Herald says folded like an accordion during the 6.4-magnitude temblor. A rescuer tells the paper that it takes a few hours to complete a search for just one household and sometimes it takes two hours just to go forward ... 12 inches. Not many buildings were damaged in the quake, mainly because Taiwan holds high building standards. The government says it will investigate whether this building's construction was subpar, with both the outgoing and incoming Taiwanese presidents noting more work needs to be done to ensure building safety, per Reuters. Suspicions about this particular building were heightened by witnesses who say they spotted big commercial cans of cooking oil shoved into wall cavities as makeshift building materials. I told my son not to buy an apartment here; it was suspiciously cheap, a man who's trying to help rescuers find his young grandsons tells the Herald.

(Apr 17, 2016 6:01 AM CDT) The strongest earthquake to hit Ecuador in decades flattened buildings and buckled highways along its Pacific coast, sending the Andean nation into a state of emergency. As rescue workers rushed in, officials said the damage stretched for hundreds of miles. The magnitude-7.8 quake was centered on Ecuador's sparsely populated fishing ports and tourist beaches. Vice President Jorge Glas later that at least 235 were confirmed dead, with another 1,557 injured, reports the AP. He said there were deaths in the cities of Manta, Portoviejo, and Guayaquil--all several hundred miles from where the quake struck shortly after nightfall. He said the quake was the strongest to hit Ecuador since 1979 and accessing the disaster zone was difficult due to landslides. We're trying to do the most we can, but there's almost nothing we can do, said Gabriel Alcivar, mayor of Pedernales, a town of 40,000 near the epicenter. Alcivar pleaded for earth-moving machines and rescue workers as dozens of buildings in the town were flattened, trapping residents among the rubble. He said looting had broken out but authorities were too busy trying to save lives to re-establish order, reports the AP. This wasn't just a house that collapsed, it was an entire town, he said. President Rafael Correa declared a national emergency and rushed home from a visit to Rome. Ecuador's Risk Management agency said 10,000 armed forces had been deployed. The USGS originally put the quake at a magnitude of 7.4 then raised it to 7.8. It had a depth of 12 miles. At least 36 aftershocks followed, one as strong as 6 on the Richter scale, and authorities urged residents to brace for even stronger ones in the coming hours and days.

(Dec 8, 2014 8:46 AM) It's a bittersweet reunion. Joyce Wharton, now 78, had recently married when her parents Hazel and Hugh Armstrong set out on a flight one morning in 1959. He was a very experienced pilot and they flew that morning out of Portland to Seattle and never arrived, Wharton says. It wasn't until 14 years later, in 1973, that the crash site was found just outside Centralia, Wash., but only Hugh's wallet and a few buttons were recovered. Now, out of the blue, Wharton has been contacted by a logger in Washington who found Hazel's wedding ring in 1997. He sent it to her in New Jersey last week, reports the New York Daily News. It was a little small cedar tree and I'm digging in the roots and flipped that ring out, Nick Buchanan tells Fox 40. He'd been hiking in the area when he came across the gold diamond ring, which he says would have been completely covered had the tree grown just a few more years. It took him nearly 20 years to find the couple's daughter, but with his nephew helping do online searches, he finally found Wharton, who's been in New Jersey since 1963. I never once thought it belonged to me, he says. I was just hoping that there was a daughter or a family member that I could turn it over to. (One freak plane accident claimed the lives of two expectant fathers earlier this year.)

(Mar 1, 2012 3:18 PM) They call themselves the Romeo and Juliet of senior citizens, and with their wedding yesterday, they unknowingly broke a world record--for the newlyweds with the oldest combined age. Together, Lillian Hartley, 95, and Allan Marks, 98, are 193 years, 8 months, and 3 days old, the Desert Sun reports. It will be a Guinness record as soon as they've provided the organization with proof of their ages, breaking the previous record of 191 years. I want to be together for all eternity, and I'm not taking any chances, says the new Mrs. Marks. The Palm Springs couple, both widowed, met 18 years ago on Yom Kippur, at temple. Marks told Hartley he liked her dress. I didn't want a relationship--I enjoyed my freedom--but he got me, she says. Since then, they've been living together in sin, Hartley said, spending their time traveling and watching Lakers games. They're not planning any big honeymoon: We celebrate every day, Hartley notes. Still, I might go to Swiss Donut and have one of the nice donuts. Click through for video of their vows.

(Apr 11, 2013 1:39 PM CDT) Justin Bieber is the most-followed person on Twitter, but don't be too impressed: Just 47% of his followers are real people, the BBC reports. Socialbakers, a service that identifies fake Twitter accounts, finds that 17.8 million of Bieber's 37.3 million followers are legit. The company spots real users by looking for genuine tweets vs. spam or repetitive buzzwords like make money and work from home. If its report is correct, Lady Gaga has more followers than Bieber: 19 million of hers are real.

(Sep 27, 2011 7:55 AM CDT) With US-Pakistani tensions on the verge of boiling over, the New York Times today has a shocking account of a 2007 incident in which the Pakistanis allegedly opened fire on American and Afghan military officials after a meeting to discuss a disputed border post. As the officers were getting into cars to leave, a Pakistani soldier shot and killed a US Army major. The gunman was immediately killed, but soon the Americans and Afghans were under fire from windows all around them, witnesses say. One Afghan colonel remembers Pakistani officers hurriedly leaving before the shooting started, implying they knew what was coming. Meanwhile, officers who'd left in one car were driven well past their helicopter pad, and into fire from a Pakistani post, their Pakistani driver refusing to stop until an American commander drew his pistol. They were forced to abandoned the car and run for the helicopter. The entire incident has been kept quiet by both the US and Pakistani government, with Pakistan blaming it first on militants, and then on a lone rogue soldier.

(Nov 19, 2014 8:31 AM) In the midst of a bitter custody battle, Genevieve Kelley took her 8-year-old daughter and vanished in November 2004. Over the past decade, the US Marshals Service followed up on tips that had them looking for the New Hampshire woman--along with new husband Scott Kelley, daughter Mary Nunes, and two horses that also disappeared--in the US, Canada, and Central and South America (Kelley, a one-time flight surgeon with the Air Force, is fluent in Spanish). Then, in March of this year, Kelley made contact through her lawyer, who told the New Hampshire prosecutor that Kelley was prepared to face her charge of custodial interference. The 50-year-old turned herself in Monday. Says her lawyer per the AP, She wants to be vindicated. She wants a trial. Mary turned 18 in February, meaning she is no longer under the purview of family court. In 2009, the AP categorized the girl's vanishing as the climax of a long, acrimonious tug of war. Kelley and Mark Nunes divorced in 1998, with Kelley retaining primary custody of the girl. The ensuing years were not exactly smooth, and in late 2003, Kelley told police that Nunes had sexually abused Mary; those allegations were determined to be unfounded. Roughly a month after the trio disappeared, Mark Nunes was awarded legal custody of the child. Mary's current location remains unknown, per CNN, though Kelley says she is safe. The Find Mary Nunes website has a phone number in the right rail of every page, along with this message: Mary, here is a number so you can talk to your daddy. It is on 24 hours a day. We love you and miss you.

(May 20, 2018 11:30 AM CDT) A missing statue of the Virgin Mary stolen from a Vermont nativity scene more than two years ago has been found unharmed and returned to its owner, the AP reports. The statue was stolen from Lyndonville in January 2016 and it was recently discovered in an apartment house storage area by Lyndonville Police Chief Jack Harris acting on a tip. It was returned to the Lyndon Ecumenical Council.

(Jun 19, 2016 12:57 PM CDT) Around the time of its 2005 launch, many people dismissed YouTube as just a repository for cat videos. That was until ostensible confessional blogger Lonelygirl15 came along in 2006 and changed everything. In a lengthy piece for the Guardian, Elena Cresci recounts the story of YouTube's first moneymaking web series and the lie it was based on. It all started June 16, 2006, with Bree--aka Lonelygirl15--and her first vlog. Bree sold herself as a bored, homeschooled teen that was part of a mysterious religion. She had one friend, Daniel. She became one of the young site's most popular stars, Cresci writes. But she was a fake. Lonelygirl15 was the invention of Miles Beckett and Mesh Flinders. I thought it would be really cool if there was a video blogger and you told the story just like you would a TV show, Beckett tells Cresci. Bree was played by Jessica Lee Rose. Yousef Abu-Taleb played Daniel. Their episodes, shot on a webcam in Flinders' bedroom, were scripted. Beckett worked tirelessly behind the scenes to figure out how to get Lonelygirl15 into the most viewed section. He discovered how YouTube's algorithm chooses a video preview image. If it was a good freeze frame, you would get like 100,000 more views, Flinders says. But as her popularity grew, Cresci writes, so too did the suspicions. Web sleuths went to work trying to uncover evidence that Bree was not who she said she was. That finally happened in September 2006. The people behind the Lonelygirl15 fessed up. Still, the series, the first on YouTube to make money off of product placement, continued for two years. And, despite being killed off a year into the series, Lonelygirl15 appears to have returned. She posted a new video on Thursday--a decade to the day after her first appearance on YouTube. Read the whole story here.

(Aug 27, 2019 5:49 PM CDT) A top European court ruled Tuesday that Russia's failure to provide adequate medical care to jailed lawyer Sergei Magnitsky could have led to his 2009 death, which sparked US and European sanctions. The European Court of Human Rights ordered Russia to pay Magnitsky's widow and mother $38,000 in damages, the AP reports. The Russian Justice Ministry said it is studying the ruling and whether to appeal. Magnitsky, an accountancy expert who worked for an international investment firm, alleged he had uncovered $230 million in tax fraud by Russian officials--and was then jailed, accused of tax evasion himself. He died after a year in pre-trial detention, at age 37, and a Russian court found him guilty of fraud four years later. A Russian presidential commission previously concluded that Magnitsky had been beaten and denied medical care, yet no one has been convicted in his death. The European court said Russian authorities' handling of Magnitsky's pancreatitis and other medical problems were manifestly inadequate and unreasonably put his life in danger. The court found Russia's handling of his detention, the investigation into his death, and his posthumous conviction all constituted violations of Magnitsky's rights. In a statement, the Russian Justice Ministry noted that the ruling does not oblige Russia to review the fraud verdict in Magnitsky's case, and that the court did not find that the lawyer's arrest and subsequent incarceration were unlawful. Still, Magnitsky's supporters welcomed the ruling and pledged to use it as a basis for further court actions and seizures of assets. Magnitsky worked in Russia for US-born financier Bill Browder and his London-based investment fund, Hermitage Capital Management. Browder said Tuesday's ruling is important as a way to heap pressure on more nations and the European Union to pass laws similar to the 2012 Magnitsky Act; per the BBC, the law allows the US to sanction Russians suspected of being involved in human rights violations.

(Mar 1, 2018 9:25 AM) Queen Elizabeth II's record 65-year reign would've come to an end almost four decades ago if a teenager's plot had gone off without a hitch. Documents from New Zealand's intelligence agency, obtained by Reuters, confirm for the first time that 17-year-old Christopher Lewis tried to assassinate the Queen--and managed to fire a shot in her vicinity--while she was touring the country on Oct. 14, 1981, as first reported by Stuff. However, Lewis didn't have a suitable vantage point from his position, reportedly the fifth floor of a building in Dunedin, nor a sufficiently high-powered rifle for the range from the target who was exiting a vehicle, according to a 1997 memo. A separate 1981 document notes a police investigation was conducted discreetly, with media apparently believing the noise was caused by a firework. Police are now looking at the case afresh following claims authorities swept it under the rug out of embarrassment and fear it would prevent future visits by the queen, per Reuters. Lewis--whose shot from a .22-caliber rifle likely passed above the crowd, per the AP--was described as severely disturbed and afterward charged with unlawful possession and discharge of a firearm, rather than attempted murder. When the queen visited New Zealand again in 1986, Lewis was sent on a paid 10-day island vacation, according to Stuff. He was eventually charged with the murder of an Auckland woman, whose infant daughter was abducted but later found safe. Lewis committed suicide while awaiting trial in 1997, denying involvement in the murder in a note left behind. (Here's what'll happen when the Queen does die.)

(Aug 16, 2017 11:25 AM CDT) If all the movies you can watch at home for one low price per month isn't enough, a Netflix co-founder has another proposal: a movie a day at actual movie theaters for one low price per month. That's the idea behind Mitch Lowe's startup company MoviePass, which Tuesday dropped that monthly subscription fee from up to $21 (for just two movies a month) to $9.95 for dozens--less than the cost of a single movie ticket in most cities, Bloomberg reports. That subscription enables moviegoers to view one showing per day in any US theater that takes debit cards (not counting 3D and Imax films), which Lowe thinks should boost lagging ticket sales. In return, MoviePass will pay the theater the full price of each ticket. To compensate for the money it may lose, MoviePass is selling a majority stake to data firm Helios and Matheson Analytics, with an IPO set for next year. But while moviegoers are getting ready to pour butter on their popcorn, Variety reports that AMC is threatening to sue MoviePass for its cheaper plan, declaring in a statement that the subscription option is shaky and unsustainable, an uneducated attempt to turn lead into gold, and not in the best interest of moviegoers, movie theaters, and movie studios. Although MoviePass says its customers increase attendance more than 110% and fork over more money for concessions, major exhibitors like AMC prefer to invest in their own customer rewards program instead of hooking up with outside parties. Lowe shrugs at AMC's waffling, comparing it to like Blockbuster was when we rolled out Netflix or Redbox. It's the big guy being afraid of the little guy offering better value to consumers.

(Oct 21, 2020 1:00 PM CDT) More than 30 years after the original movie, the fantasy world of Willow is returning. Warwick Davis, who played the title character in the 1988 Lucasfilm movie, will return for the Disney Plus series, Mashable reports. Director Ron Howard is also returning as executive producer, while Jon Chu of Crazy Rich Asians will direct. Growing up in the '80s, Willow has had a profound effect on me, Chu said in a statement. The story of the bravest heroes in the least likely places allowed me, an Asian-American kid growing up in a Chinese restaurant looking to go to Hollywood, to believe in the power of our own will, determination, and of course, inner magic. Variety reports that the series will be Lucasfilm's first non-Star Wars project since 2015.

(Mar 1, 2019 7:15 AM) A snow-covered tent has been the only possible sign of two climbers missing on the world's ninth-highest mountain since Sunday. A flash of reddish-orange fabric amid a sea of white was spotted Thursday during a helicopter search of Pakistan's 26,660-foot Nanga Parbat, which also turned up evidence of heavy snowfall or possibly an avalanche, reports Rock and Ice. Brit Tom Ballard, 30, and Italian Daniele Nardi, 42, are last known to have reached 20,670 feet, or more than 3,000 feet above the tent's position. The experienced mountaineers set out in January hoping to be the first to scale Mummery Rib, the steep western face of the peak dubbed Killer Mountain. They persisted through poor weather and heavy snow, even as two Pakistani team members abandoned their efforts, per Outside. Two cooks and a Pakistani military officer remaining at base camp heard from Ballard and Nardi on Sunday, as the climbers were between Camps 3 and 4. But radio silence followed bad weather, which obscured the mountain from view. As conditions cleared Wednesday, the climbers appeared to have vanished. Helicopters and rescuers were allowed to arrive Thursday, though airspace had been closed amid a dispute between Pakistan and India. No trace of the climbers was found, per the New York Times. This was Nardi's fifth visit to Nanga Parbat. Ballard--whose mother died on K2 in 1995, a few months after she became the first woman to scale Mount Everest without an oxygen supply--is the first person to solo climb all six major north faces of the Alps in a single season. (A climber died on Nanga Parbat last year.)

(Mar 21, 2018 1:39 PM CDT) Lois Goodman was walking out of a hotel on her way to judge a US Open tennis match in New York in 2012 when police swept in to arrest her in front of news cameras. The charge was murder and the victim was her husband, Alan Goodman, who'd been found dead in their Los Angeles home four months earlier. It would be another four months before prosecutors dropped the charges. Six years later, Lois Goodman, 76, is still fighting to reclaim the reputation that was tarnished by the legal ordeal, reports the AP. Goodman goes to federal court Wednesday for trial in her lawsuit claiming a doctor at the LA coroner's office deprived her civil rights by falsifying her husband's autopsy report. She says Deputy Medical Examiner Yulai Wang didn't follow procedure when he changed the cause of death from an accident to a homicide without explanation. Police said Goodman bludgeoned her husband with a coffee mug. Her lawyers said the legally blind 80-year-old tripped and fell down stairs at home while she was out on April 17, 2012. She returned home that evening to find him dead in bed. A shattered coffee mug was at the bottom of the stairs. The charges were dropped in December 2012 after Goodman passed a lie detector test and two other experts retained by prosecutors concluded the death was an accident. Goodman now wants the cause of death to be listed as an accident on the death certificate. She also wants $100,000 that she spent on lawyers, bail and other expenses as well as unspecified damages for the emotional toll. The public humiliation is unending, her lawsuit states. Wang, who still works for the county coroner, has denied the allegations. Attorneys in the case are under a court order not to comment until a jury is seated.

(Feb 12, 2018 2:06 PM) An Ohio woman had given up hope of seeing her wedding dress again after a dry cleaner mix-up three decades ago until her daughter's friend saw photos of the dress on Facebook. Michelle Havrilla was nearly speechless after getting the dress back last week for the first time since her 1985 wedding, per the AP. It turns out, her dress was put in the wrong box by a now-defunct dry cleaner in Willowick and stored in another family's attic all this time.

(Jul 9, 2020 7:04 AM CDT) Late last year, Gary Larson suggested we'd soon be seeing some new samples of his famous comic strip, The Far Side. That day came this week, a quarter century after Larson officially retired the quirky cartoon, the New York Times reports. On TheFarSide.com website, fans are treated to a handful of signature single-panel Larsons (we don't want to give too much away, but they involve a taxidermist, bears, aliens, and Cub Scouts, among other things), but with a twist: Larson created the new cartoons in an entirely different way than he used to. The 'New Stuff' that you'll see here is the result of my journey into the world of digital art, he says on his site, explaining that a clogged pen that was frustrating him while penning Christmas cards a few years ago led to him experimenting with a digital tablet. I hail from a world of pen and ink, and suddenly I was feeling like I was sitting at the controls of a 747, he says of his digital experience. Larson--who launched the strip on Jan. 1, 1980, in the San Francisco Chronicle and kept inking it until he retired in 1995--had recently rebooted his website, featuring classic Far Side strips that CNET describes as [depicting] the ludicrous sides of humanity, as well as the secret lives of animals--often cows. He hinted in December that I'm looking forward to slipping in some new things every so often. Fans are loving the return to his bizarre world. By far one of the best days of my adult life! one raves in the comments. New Larson cartoons won't be a completely regular thing, though. I don't want to mislead, Larson writes. This corner of the website--'New Stuff'--is not a resurrection of 'The Far Side' daily cartoons.

(May 8, 2018 7:16 PM CDT) It's official: Bill and Ted are getting a third movie. The sequel to 1989's Bill and Ted's Excellent Adventure and 1991's Bill and Ted's Bogus Journey, which has long been in the works, was announced Tuesday at the Cannes Film Festival, the AP reports. The stars of the original cult classics, Keanu Reeves and Alex Winter, will reprise their roles; the movie will involve middle-aged Bill and Ted attempting to write the song that will save the universe and, of course, time-traveling in their quest to do so, Rolling Stone reports. Bill and Ted Face the Music was written by franchise creators Chris Matheson and Ed Solomon; it's in pre-production with no release date yet set. (Years ago, Reeves said the sequel involves Bill and Ted drift[ing] off into esoterica and los[ing] their rock.

(Mar 28, 2018 7:41 AM CDT) In Italy's own version of Les Miserables, a man who's fought a nearly 10-year legal battle over an eggplant finally got his reprieve from the country's court of last resort. Per AFP, the unnamed man, then 49, was nabbed by cops in 2009 emerging from private property near Lecce in southern Italy, along with a bucket holding a lone eggplant. His excuse: He had no job and needed to feed his child. The police apparently weren't swayed, and so began an almost decade-long wrangle with the justice system, which first hit him with a five-month prison sentence and a $620 fine. On appeal, that penalty was knocked down to just two months behind bars and a $150 fine, but the defendant's lawyers pressed to keep the case alive, bringing it all the way to Italy's Supreme Court of Cassation. It was there that the court did some head-shaking that the case had even made it this far--and cost taxpayers nearly $10,000, per local paper La Repubblica--and acquitted the man, noting he was definitely acting to satisfy the hunger of his family ... there are grounds for justification. (Americans may be less apt to lift an eggplant, because apparently we don't love eggplant.)

(Feb 23, 2018 6:44 PM) An employee at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in Atlanta left work Feb. 12 because he wasn't feeling well, ABC News reports. He hasn't been seen since. According to NBC News, 35-year-old Timothy Cunningham is a US Public Health Service commander who has been part of responses to Ebola and Zika outbreaks. Cunningham's family became worried when he stopped returning texts and phone calls. They say he spoke to his sister nearly everyday, but she hasn't heard from him since the morning of Feb. 12. After extended family found Cunningham's house apparently empty but with two windows open, his parents drove from Maryland to Atlanta. They found Cunningham's phone, wallet, keys, car, and dog at his house, but there was no sign of their son. They say he would never leave his dog unattended. Terrell Cunningham says there were some exchanges via phone as well as text the day before Timothy disappeared that alerted me to be concerned about our son. Police are searching for Cunningham with the help of friends, family, and the Morehouse College alumni network. It's not the type of news you want to hear. Your child is missing, Terrell Cunningham tells ABC News. Thirty-five years old, but always your child. The CDC calls Timothy Cunningham a highly respected member of our CDC family. He has two degrees from Harvard, won the Outstanding Atlanta award in 2014, and made the Atlanta Business Chronicle's 40 under 40 list in 2017. Cunningham's friends call his disappearance shocking. He has this pristine service record and background, one friend tells NBC.

(Oct 16, 2018 6:12 AM CDT) It's the city that doesn't sleep--and it just became, for one weekend, the city that doesn't shoot. The NYPD reports that by the time Monday rolled around, the last time someone in New York City limits had been shot was in Brooklyn on Thursday, meaning that the city went an entire weekend without anyone being shot for the first time in a quarter-century, New York Daily News reports. Reliable records on the stat go back to 1993. A man shot in the ankle in Brooklyn around lunchtime on Monday broke the three-day streak, but the Friday-through-Sunday record stands. I can't remember the last time we had a weekend where we didn't have at least one shooting in the city, says NYPD Chief Terence Monahan, who the New York Post notes has been with the department since the early '80s. What Monahan says often leads to shootings is gang violence, and he says what helps prevent them is his department concentrating on keeping retaliation at bay. One (shooting) can turn into five if we're not on top of it, Monahan says, explaining that departmental planners meet each Friday to come up with a game plan on how to keep the Big Apple safe. Although the murder rate in the city of 8.6 million people has gone up about 8% from last year, 734 people had been shot in 2018 as of Sunday, compared with 753 in 2017 during the same period. This is working because the NYPD has the best strategy, the best training ... because this department never rests on its laurels, Mayor Bill de Blasio says. (That's a big drop from Labor Day weekend in NYC seven years ago.)

(Jan 15, 2018 7:23 AM) Signs of imminent eruption is not a phrase one living on the island of Luzon likely wants to hear. But, per CNN, that's what is being said about the Mayon volcano in the Philippines. On the heels of three steam eruptions Sunday, the Philippine Institute of Volcanology and Seismology (PHIVOLCS) bumped the alert level to three on a scale that goes to five, signifying an increased tendency towards hazardous eruption, which it suggests could happen within weeks or even days. The AP reports that almost 15,000 people have been evacuated from seven at-risk cities and towns. The AP explains that the steam explosions may have breached solidified lava plugging the crater and triggered a flow of lava that trails down from the crater a distance that measures less than a half-mile. PHIVOLCS describes bright crater glow that signifies the growth of a new lava dome and beginnings of lava flow towards the southern slopes, per the Straits Times. Eruptions have been recorded at Mayon since 1616; among the nearly 50 prior eruptions is the worst, one in 1814 that left 1,200 dead. In 2013, five climbers were killed when Mayon spewed ash.

(Jun 3, 2018 1:54 PM CDT) In what is being called a first since 1889, a large-scale, government sanctioned bare-knuckle boxing event took place in Wyoming on Saturday night and things got bloody. Per USA Today, a sold out crowd of 2,000 people in Cheyenne watched as 10 bouts played out before them with fighters protected only by a little gauze around the palm. An even larger audience likely tuned in via pay-per-view to see the fights, including four heavyweight bouts. Fighters came from several backgrounds including boxing, UFC and MMA. The quickest knockout occurred when Sam Shewmaker used one punch to send Eric Prindle to the canvas 18 seconds into their heavyweight bout. It felt like hitting a home run, Shewmaker told the AP., a fourth-generation stone mason from the tiny central Missouri town of Gravois Mills. I didn't think I would be able to catch him that early, but luckily I did. In the only female fight of the night, 29-year-old Bec Rawlings from Brisbane, Australia stopped Alma Garcia with a TKO in the second round. Rawlings and her fellow combatants were all eager to become the first to take off the gloves for a large-scale event since July 8, 1889, when John L. Sullivan went 75 rounds to beat Jake Kilrain. Even that event was illegal and had to be staged under the cover of secrecy as most states had outlawed the non-gloved version of boxing. Fighting was forced underground until 2011, when a Yavapai Nation sanctioned a match that drew more than a million viewers. The promoter of that event and Saturday's, David Feldman, realized there was a hungry market for bare-knuckle fights. Wyoming has since become the first state to sanction and regulate the sport.

(Feb 15, 2018 4:45 PM) The future looks bleak for the world's orangutans following the release this week of a study that found Borneo lost approximately 148,500 orangutans--more than half its orangutan population--between 1999 and 2015. I expected to see a fairly steep decline, but I did not anticipate it would be this large, study coauthor Serge Wich tells the Guardian. You think the numbers can't be that high, but unfortunately they are. Coauthor Maria Voigt agrees, telling NPR the number of orangutans lost is much higher than people had anticipated. It's estimated there are only 70,000 to 100,000 Bornean orangutans left--the orangutan species is found only on the island of Borneo--and only half the remaining 64 orangutan populations on the island contain enough members to have a viable future. Part of the problem is habitat loss. Borneo has the worst deforestation rate in the world, with approximately 865,000 acres of forest lost to development every year between 2001 and 2016. Researchers estimate another 45,000 orangutans could be lost in the next 35 years from deforestation alone. But Voigt says hunting of orangutans is at least a major driver if not the major driver for their decline. They're killed for food or when they wander onto plantations; mothers are killed to sell their babies as pets. We know this decline has been largely due to hunting, and if we can turn that around, these orangutans could, over a long period, bounce back, Wich tells the Guardian. The world's other two species of orangutans--both found in Indonesia--have fewer than 15,000 or so members combined. (A recent study found great apes may be able to read minds. )

(Nov 5, 2018 9:05 AM) In a single night, his life ... changed forever. So says the host of an Australian TV show in her tribute column to Sam Ballard, a young man who took an ill-advised dare from his friends in 2010 and just died from complications related to that challenge. The New Zealand Herald reports that Ballard--said to be either 27 or 28--passed away eight years after his pals, during a night of drinking, egged him on to eat a slug. Ballard did, and soon after he started feeling pain in his legs; the Independent notes he also started vomiting and had dizzy spells. He ended up falling into a coma for more than a year, and the reason was stunning: He'd been infected with rat lungworm, a parasite usually found in rodents, but which can occasionally end up in snails and slugs if they eat rat excrement. As a result of the parasite, Ballard contracted a type of meningitis tied to rat lungworm, and things went downhill from there. The former rugby player had since had limited movement in his limbs, needed help going to the bathroom and eating, and had trouble communicating, though, based on his reactions to things, you [knew he was] there, one of his friends tells the Herald. Ballard's mother, who has said she doesn't blame his friends for the slug-eating dare, has been fighting the Australian government since at least last October, when her son's disability funding was significantly cut. Lisa Wilkinson, the TV host who's interviewed the Ballards, says his final words to his mom were: I love you. (This teen's friends buried him in sand. Then came the hookworms.)

(Jul 2, 2018 7:17 AM CDT) A person has cleared their conscience by paying a 44-year-old parking ticket. The police department in Minersville, Pa., received a letter last week with $5 and a note inside. The return address was Feeling guilty, Wayward Road, Anytown, Ca. Police Chief Michael Combs tells WNEP-TV the note said: Dear PD, I've been carrying this ticket around for 40 plus years. Always intending to pay. Forgive me if I don't give you my info. With respect, Dave.

(Jan 28, 2019 4:32 PM) A nightmare ending to the story of a 13-year-old Iowa boy who ran away from home: Corey Brown was found dead Sunday morning. He ran away after a disciplinary discussion with his parents Tuesday night during which his phone was taken away, police say, though the police chief tells the Washington Post it was simply a typical discussion about household rules and not a fight or argument. His parents realized he was missing early Wednesday and an intense search ensued; concern for the eighth-grader was high due to snow that fell Tuesday and Wednesday, plus three consecutive days of below-zero temperatures immediately after his disappearance, the Des Moines Register reports. Police say the Marshalltown boy's body was found in a secluded area about a mile away from his home and that no criminal activity was suspected, but gave no further details on the circumstances surrounding his death or the discovery of his body, other than to say multiple scenarios were under investigation. Brown's family asked through police that their privacy be respected, and no friends or neighbors have commented on the details. His tearful parents and 16-year-old brother had pleaded with him to come home at a press conference Thursday, per the Gazette: Corey, if you're out there bud, you're not in trouble, just come home, said his dad. Echoed his mom, Please, please just come home. We want you safe at home. We love you so much. Our hearts bleed for the Brown family, Marshalltown's mayor said in a statement after the boy's body was found. The school district also expressed its condolences in a statement, noting Corey was loved by many and will be deeply missed. Counselors will be available to assist students at the local middle school and high school, the statement said. (Another boy who recently went missing was found alive after two days.)

(Jul 8, 2020 3:49 AM CDT) On Sept. 26, 2014, 43 undergraduate students at a Mexican teachers' college disappeared in rural Mexico, apparently abducted by local police. One bone fragment was found in December 2014 and identified as belonging to one of the missing students; since then, no other remains have been found--until now. The Mexican government announced Tuesday that forensic scientists have identified bone fragments found near the place where the students disappeared as belonging to Christian Alfonso Rodriguez Telumbre, the New York Times reports. The case has come to symbolize corruption in the country; the students are assumed to have been murdered, and while authority figures have been implicated, no one has been tried and the motive is still unclear. The previous administration has been accused of lying about what happened and botching the investigation, the Guardian reports, and the students' families have long demanded a more thorough probe. We have broken the pact of impunity and silence that surrounded the case, the special prosecutor said in announcing the news. Today we tell the families and society that the right to the truth will prevail. A director of a human rights organization representing the families says they expect the identification to be the beginning of a new and serious investigation that once and for all clarifies what happened to every single one of the students. He adds that it was an anonymous tip that led investigators to the remains, which were found about a half-mile from the garbage dump where the previous administration insisted the bodies had been burned, which proves that narrative wrong.

(Jun 29, 2018 3:37 AM CDT) A man linked by DNA to a 1974 ritualistic church killing on the Stanford University campus apparently killed himself in his San Jose apartment Thursday after detectives knocked on his door to serve a search warrant, authorities say. Steve Crawford, 72, was a security guard who claimed to have found the body of 19-year-old Arlis Perry inside the Stanford Memorial Church, a chapel on the university campus, in October 1974. Perry had fought with her new husband and had come to the church at night to pray, CBS San Francisco reports. Perry was found with an icepick in the back of her head and was naked below the waist. She had been molested with a 3-foot altar candle and another candle had been placed between her breasts, investigators reported.

(Mar 30, 2018 1:34 PM CDT) No longer able to skirt the issue, one of Asia's largest airlines will allow its female flight attendants to wear pants, the Guardian reports. According to the BBC, female flight attendants for Hong Kong-based Cathay Pacific had been required to wear short skirts since the airline's founding in 1946. Flight attendant unions requested changes to the uniform in 2014, arguing that the short skirts could lead to sexual harassment, and reiterated their request this month. There's sexual harassment, not only in the workplace but even in public transport, people trying to take pictures under their skirts, the Guardian quotes the vice-chair of the Hong Kong Dragon Airlines Flight Attendants Association as saying. Negotiations between the unions and Cathay Pacific ended Thursday. The uniform rule changes will apply to flight attendants and other uniformed staff for Cathay Pacific and Cathay Dragon. The stereotype of the flight attendant is very old-style already: looking pretty, full make-up, and wearing a skirt, the chairwoman of the Cathay Pacific Flight Attendants Union tells the South China Morning Post. It is a good time to have a revamp of our image. But the unions say the changes won't actually go into effect until Cathay next updates its uniforms, which could take three years. Just as we recognize it is important to provide our customers with more choice, the same is also true for our colleagues, a Cathay spokesperson says.

(Sep 17, 2018 1:12 AM CDT) An observatory in the mountains of southern New Mexico that had been closed since early September because of an undisclosed security concern is scheduled to reopen on Monday, officials managing the facility said. The Sunspot Solar Observatory no longer faces a security threat to staff, the Association of Universities for Research in Astronomy said in a statement Sunday. The facility closed on Sept. 6. The association has hired a temporary security team to patrol the observatory when it reopens. Given the significant amount of publicity the temporary closure has generated, and the consequent expectation of an unusual number of visitors to the site, we are temporarily engaging a security service while the facility returns to a normal working environment, the association said.

(Jul 23, 2019 4:20 AM CDT) Workers removing old freezer units from a former supermarket in Council Bluffs, Iowa, earlier this year made a horrifying discovery: the body of a worker who vanished almost a decade earlier. Larry Ely Murillo-Moncada, 25, was reported missing Nov. 28, 2009, after he became upset and ran out of his parents' home. It was a snowstorm at the time, Sgt. Brandon Danielson tells the Des Moines Register. He left with no shoes, no socks, no keys, no car. Relatives said a day earlier, after Murillo-Moncada finished a shift at the No Frills supermarket, he seemed disoriented and said he was hearing voices. Police believe Murillo-Moncada went to the supermarket after leaving the home, climbed on top of the freezer units, and fell into an 18-inch gap between the back of the units and the wall. Police say Murillo-Moncada--who was 5-foot-5 and weighed 140 pounds--fell about 12 feet into the area where he was trapped. They say the noise of the units would have made it impossible for anyone to hear cries for help. No Frills closed the store in 2016, reports the Omaha World-Herald. Former employees say the top of the freezer units were used for storage and it was not unusual for workers to be up there. Authorities said Monday that the Iowa Division of Criminal Investigation had used DNA from relatives to identify Murillo-Moncada. They said an autopsy revealed no signs of trauma and the death was ruled accidental. (The new occupants of a Houston home found the skeleton of the previous owner in the attic.)

(Oct 19, 2018 1:10 PM CDT) It's taken nearly 140 years of building and two recent years of talks, but it looks like Barcelona's most-visited tourist attraction, the unfinished Sagrada Familia, may finally see its finishing touches put on. The Guardian and New York Times report a $41 million, 10-year deal has been struck between trustees for the famous Roman Catholic church and the city council so that the structure--whose name means holy family, per Reuters--can get the licensing paperwork from the city, which it's never had, that it needs to be completed. The money paid out to the city, which People notes is the amount accrued over all these years in fees from lacking the proper permits, will help fund improvements to transportation services there. Work began on the massive church in 1882, and the Times explains that a building permit was acquired in the town it was then located in: Sant Marti de Provencals. But that town was eventually absorbed into Barcelona, and city authorities there apparently never issued a new permit. To complicate things, Antoni Gaudi, the Catalan architect behind the building's design, died in 1926 after being hit by a tram, with only about 25% of the structure complete. Officials hope that with all the red tape about to be moved out of the way, the structure, which is about two-thirds done, could be finished by 2026, the century anniversary of Gaudi's death. (Not quite a landmark, but this unfinished US nuclear power plant went up for sale for $36.4 million in 2016.)

(Jun 19, 2019 7:57 AM CDT) MH17 was downed over the Ukraine on July 17, 2014, while en route from Amsterdam to Kuala Lumpur. Now, the first criminal charges in the case. The BBC reports international arrest warrants have been issued for Igor Girkin, Sergey Dubinskiy, and Oleg Pulatov of Russia and Leonid Kharchenko of the Ukraine. ABC News describes them as pro-Russian separatist commanders ; the Guardian offers more depth on their backgrounds, which are said to include service with Russia's FSB spy agency and the GRU, the country's military intelligence service. Girkin was reportedly commander of the Donetsk People's Republic (DNR), a self-proclaimed state in east Ukraine, when the plane was shot down. The Dutch-helmed Joint Investigation Team (JIT) says the men formed a chain linking DNR with the Russian Federation. The JIT isn't accusing the men of actually firing the Russian missile that struck the plane but believes they facilitated the missile's acquisition and transport to separatist-held eastern Ukraine. Prosecutor Fred Westerbeke says they are charged with causing the crash of MH17, leading to the death of all the people on board ... and murdering 298 passengers, per CNN. The AP reports Russian and Ukrainian laws don't allow for extradition. A trial is scheduled to begin next year, and the Guardian reports the men could be tried in absentia. Westerbeke says that in the short term we will ask Russia to hand the summons to the suspects who are in the Russian Federation and will work with Russia to set up interviews with the men. Girkin on Wednesday addressed his alleged involvement, telling the AP it isn't so. The insurgents did not shoot it down, he said.

(Jul 15, 2018 6:17 AM CDT) There are no signs Russia is targeting the 2018 midterm elections for cyberattacks with the scale and scope it used in 2016, Homeland Security Secretary Kirstjen Nielsen told a conference of state secretaries of state and other high-ranking election officials on Saturday. She added, however, that US intelligence officials are seeing persistent Russian efforts using social media, sympathetic spokespeople and other fronts to sow discord and divisiveness amongst the American people, though not necessarily focused on specific politicians or political campaigns, reports Fox News. Nielsen's comments come sandwiched between the Friday indictments of 12 Russians on election-hacking charges, and the meeting between her boss, President Trump, and Russian President Vladimir Putin on Monday.

(May 24, 2018 2:48 PM CDT) A kind gesture has struck a chord on the internet. Nearly a decade ago, Jacques Ruffin was given the gift of music, but didn't know it at the time, reports MNN. Recently Ruffin, now 21, was cleaning out a hallway closet and found a letter from James Jones, owner of Allegro Music Centre in Florida, to Ruffin's mother. Dated Dec. 17, 2009, the letter said that the store owner was forgiving the mother's debt on the trumpet she had been renting for her son and was giving Jacques the trumpet. I have been through bad times like you, the letter read. But remember, Tough times never last, Tough people do. After Ruffin posted the note on Reddit, comments began pouring in lauding the kind gesture, some sharing similar stories of generosity and others saying they had been inspired to donate their own old instruments to students in need. I had no idea that my mother was struggling so much financially, Ruffin tells the BBC. Jones, who seemed a little embarrassed by all the attention according to one Redditor who visited his store, said that Ruffin's mother had lost her job and he didn't want Jacques to miss out just because of trouble with making payments. He's done the same for other students and encouraged other music lovers to donate instruments to schools when possible to help out kids who want to learn. Ruffin says he is grateful to Jones for giving him a gift that has opened so many doors for him. I really appreciate what he did, he said. He is a hero in my eyes. Ruffin has set up a GoFundMe campaign to raise money for music programs so that every student that is interested in learning to play an instrument will have the ability to do so.

(Sep 22, 2018 8:10 AM CDT) It's taken nearly three decades, but California authorities think they've finally nabbed the NorCal Rapist. At a Friday presser, Sacramento Police Chief Daniel Hahn and Sacramento County DA Anne Marie Schubert said Roy Charles Waller, 58, was arrested Thursday as he showed up to work at UC Berkeley, per the Sacramento Bee. Waller is suspected of committing at least 10 rapes across six different counties between 1991 and 2006. Detective Avis Beery, who's been working the case for more than a decade, tells the Washington Post that the rapist's typical M.O. was to sneak into women's houses (said to usually be Asian women) while they were sleeping, overpower them, and bind them before assaulting them. Sometimes the women would be forced to withdraw money at an ATM, while other times the suspect would simply take things from their homes before he fled. What finally broke the case open: a genealogy website. Investigators pieced together Waller's ID in record-setting time by plugging in DNA from the rapist's crime scenes into GEDmatch--the same site used to find Golden State Killer suspect Joseph James DeAngelo. A fairly close match popped up, and from there the sleuths built a family tree that led them to Waller, who matched up with the rapist's age and weight descriptions. Public records also showed Waller had lived in or near the locations where the rapes occurred. After acquiring Waller's DNA via at least one discarded sample, investigators were able to make a match with the crime scene DNA. I have often said in my career that DNA is the silent witness to the truth, Schubert said at the presser. Waller, who's being held without bail, was charged with 12 counts of forcible sexual assault and is set to be arraigned Monday in Sacramento Superior Court. If convicted, he faces life in prison.

(Jul 17, 2019 3:07 AM CDT) A judge on Tuesday freed an Oklahoma inmate who has served nearly three decades in prison for a 1991 killing, saying he did not commit the crime. Corey Atchison, 48, was released Tuesday by Tulsa County District Judge Sharon Holmes, who said she believes a key prosecution witness was coerced and that Atchison was innocent of the crime. I don't really know what I want to do, because my goal all these years was just to be free, Atchison said following the ruling. Great day, said Ruth Scott, Atchison's mother, as she left the courthouse. I knew he didn't do it. I knew he didn't do it, I knew he didn't do it when it happened, Scott said to reporters outside the building.

(Jan 22, 2019 4:00 AM) An ancient stone circle in Scotland turned out to be as authentic a Neolithic relic as Spinal Tap's stage props. After the owner of a farm in Leochel-Cushnie, Aberdeenshire, contacted authorities about a stone circle on his property, archaeologists investigated the site and concluded that it was an authentic--if unusually small--monument that was probably thousands of years old, the Guardian reports. They were later contacted by the farm's previous owner, who told them it was a replica he had built in the 1990s. The monument was a recumbent stone circle, with a monolith on its side, a type of ancient stone circle found only in the Aberdeenshire area and the southwest of Ireland. Neil Ackerman, historic environment record assistant at Aberdeenshire Council, said that while the truth is disappointing, the monument is in a fantastic location and he hopes people continue to enjoy it, the BBC reports. It is obviously disappointing to learn of this development, but it also adds an interesting element to its story, he says. That it so closely copies a regional monument type shows the local knowledge, appreciation, and engagement with the archaeology of the region by the local community. He says most recumbent stone circles were built 3,500 to 4,500 years ago, though they are notoriously difficult to date. (Last year, scientists learned more about the people buried at Stonehenge.)

(Aug 17, 2018 7:57 AM CDT) Bases loaded, nobody out. The Angels' David Fletcher then hits a hard ground ball to third that results in a triple play last seen in Major League Baseball in 1912, reports USA Today. The rarity? The batter wasn't one of the outs, according to STATS. Watch the play pulled off by the Texas Rangers in this video. Even without the batter anomaly, the play was still pretty unusual, notes ESPN. In baseball parlance, it was a 5-4 triple play (referring to third-baseman Jurickson Profar and second-baseman Rougned Odor), only the third such one in the expansion era that began in 1961. Profar made two of the outs himself, by tagging the runner on third and stepping on the base; he then threw to Odor for the last out.

(May 10, 2019 5:03 AM CDT) A man charged with bludgeoning and strangling to death a Hollywood television director more than three decades ago was arrested Thursday in North Carolina after police said DNA and a confession linked him to the crime. Edwin Hiatt was arrested in Burke County for the 1985 death of Barry Crane in Los Angeles. He has been charged with murder in California and will be returned there, police say. A housekeeper found Crane, 57, dead in his garage in his Studio City townhouse on July 5, 1985. He was naked and had been wrapped in bedsheets. He had been beaten with a large ceramic statue and strangled with a telephone cord, the News Herald of Morgantown, North Carolina, reports, citing court documents.

(Jul 9, 2018 10:45 AM CDT) He shared the screen with drag queen Divine, starred in Damn Yankees, and put out a No. 1 record. Now, sad news regarding Tab Hunter, who made hearts thump in general in the '50s: The actor and singer has died, just three days before he would have turned 87, per a Facebook page tied to the star. Allan Glaser, Hunter's romantic partner for more than 30 years, confirmed his death of a heart attack caused by a blood clot, calling his passing unexpected and sudden, per the Hollywood Reporter. Born in 1931 as Arthur Andrew Kelm, Hunter's stage name was brainstormed by talent agent Henry Willson, who also repped Rock Hudson. His blond surfer image nabbed him magazine covers and the role of Washington Senators star Joe Hardy in 1958's Damn Yankees. Hunter's 1957 Dot Records recording of Young Love, which stayed at No. 1 on the charts for six weeks, also spurred the creation of Warner Bros. Records after Jack Warner became irritated he didn't have his own record company to showcase the voice of his studio's star. Hunter appeared alongside Divine in John Waters' Polyester in 1981, as well as in 1985's Lust in the Dust, which also co-starred Divine. Although he was often seen out and about with Natalie Wood, Sophia Loren, and other big-name actresses, Hunter had a relationship with Anthony Perkins, and he confirmed he was gay in his 2005 autobiography. Meanwhile, his longtime love Glaser produced a 2015 documentary about Hunter entitled Tab Hunter Confidential, in which the actor discussed being a closeted gay man in Hollywood while simultaneously being seen as one of its biggest hunks.

(Jun 16, 2020 7:53 AM CDT) At least 20 Indian soldiers, including a senior army officer, were killed in a confrontation with Chinese troops along their disputed border high in the Himalayas where thousands of soldiers on both sides have been facing off for over a month, the Indian army said Tuesday. The incident--in which neither side fired any shots, according to Indian officials--is the first deadly confrontation between the two Asian giants since 1975, reports the AP. The Indian Army initially said in a statement that three Indian soldiers had died, but later updated the number to 20 and said 17 were critically injured in the line of duty at the standoff location and exposed to sub-zero temperatures in the high altitude terrain. The statement did not disclose the nature of the soldiers' injuries. Two Indian security officials told the AP that soldiers from the two sides engaged in fistfights and stone-throwing, which led to the casualties. A spokesman for China's Foreign Ministry said Indian forces had violated the consensus of the two sides, crossed the border illegally twice and carried out provocative attacks on Chinese personnel, resulting in serious physical conflicts between the two border forces. The rep gave no details on any Chinese casualties but said Tuesday that China had strongly protested the incident while still being committed to maintaining peace and tranquility along the disputed and heavily militarized border, where India is building a strategic road. Army officers and diplomats have held a series of meetings to try to end the impasse, with no breakthrough.

(Jun 12, 2018 3:33 AM CDT) Ivanka Trump and Jared Kushner made at least $82 million last year while serving as unpaid senior advisers to the president, according to financial disclosure forms released Monday. Kushner drew at least $70 million from dozens of companies linked to his family's real estate company, Kushner Cos., including $5 million in income from an apartment complex in Plainsboro, NJ. Trump made at least $12 million, including $5 million from the trust overseeing her clothing brand, $3.9 million from her stake in DC's Trump International Hotel, and $2 million in severance as a result of her January departure from the Trump Organization, reports the Washington Post. Trump also received a $289,300 book advance and $747,622 from three companies tied to the Trump Organization's international projects. To reduce her interest in the performance of the business, Trump will now receive fixed yearly payments from the three limited-liability companies, rather than profit sharing, according to the filings. Still, they're resurrecting concerns over possible conflicts of interest given the couple's broad White House roles and previous claims that the Trump family is profiting off the presidency, per the Guardian. Based on the filings, CNN estimates Kushner's net worth is $174 million to $710 million and Trump's is $55 million to $75 million. (The Post suggests similar ranges of $179 million to $735 million and $55.3 million to $75.6 million.) The couple's ethics counsel adds that their net worth remains largely the same, with changes reflecting more the way the form requires disclosure than any substantial difference in assets or liabilities.

(Apr 10, 2019 11:49 AM CDT) Japan partially lifted an evacuation order in one of the two hometowns of the tsunami-wrecked Fukushima nuclear plant on Wednesday for the first time since the 2011 disaster. Decontamination efforts have lowered radiation levels significantly in the area about 4 miles southwest of the plant where three reactors had meltdowns due to the damage caused by the March 2011 earthquake and tsunami, reports the AP. The action allows people to return to about 40% of Okuma. The other hometown, Futaba, remains off-limits, as are several other towns nearby. Many former residents are reluctant to return as the complicated process to safely decommission the plant continues. Opponents of lifting the evacuation orders in long-abandoned communities say the government is trying to showcase safety ahead of the Tokyo Olympics next summer.

(Feb 9, 2019 6:30 AM) Dozens of victims of a 2015 duck boat crash in Washington state that killed five and injured more than 60 have just been handed a hefty sum by a Seattle jury. After what Law.com calls a marathon trial that started back in October--one of the plaintiff's attorneys says it was the longest personal-injury case ever in the Evergreen State--a $123 million payout was ordered for the almost 40 victims and families. The vehicle from local tour operator Ride the Ducks of Seattle was going over the Aurora Bridge on Sept. 24, 2015, when it collided with a charter bus filled with college students. The lawsuit alleged one of the duck boat's axle's had busted, leading to the accident. The jury found Ride the Ducks of Seattle about one-third at fault for the crash, while placing two-thirds of the blame for the accident on Ride the Ducks International, which built the vehicle, per the AP and MyNorthwest.com. The plaintiffs' complaint had alleged that Ride the Ducks of Seattle had dismissed a 2013 service announcement to take care of a known axle flaw; all other Ride the Ducks operations outside of Seattle had reportedly made the fix. I hope [the award] will inspire other people to bring these lawsuits against, at least, this company that put this product on the marketplace, so all the vehicles on the roads are no longer on the roads, the plaintiffs' lead trial attorney, Karen Koehler, said, per Law.com. (The captain of a duck boat that sank in Missouri last summer, killing 17, was indicted in the fall.)

(Jul 21, 2018 5:30 AM CDT) Among the 31 people aboard the duck boat that capsized on Table Rock Lake in Branson, Missouri, Thursday night, were 11 members of an Indiana family, only two of whom survived. One of those survivors, Tia Coleman, spoke with Fox59 by phone Friday; she says the other survivor was her nephew. Among the dead: all her children, her husband, and many of her in-laws, per Reuters. She alleges the boat's captain waved off the need for life jackets, saying you won't need them. She says none of her family members had them on, and when it was time to grab them, it was too late and I believe that a lot of people could have been spared. Ozarks First has more from Coleman, who spoke about being in the water. She said in part, I can't see anybody, I couldn't hear anything, I couldn't hear screams, it feels like I was out there on my own. And I was yelling, screaming and finally I said, 'Lord just let me die, let me die, I can't keep drowning.' She said she subsequently saw life jackets being thrown from a nearby boat.

(Jul 14, 2018 11:00 AM CDT) The Israeli military carried out its largest daytime airstrike campaign in Gaza since the 2014 war Saturday as Hamas militants fired dozens of rockets into Israel, threatening to spark a wider conflagration after weeks of tensions along the volatile border, the AP reports. No casualties or major damage was reported on either side, and Israel said it was focused on hitting military targets and was warning Gaza civilians to keep their distance from certain sites. But it still marked a significant flare-up after a long period of a generally low-level, simmering conflict. Lt. Col. Jonathan Conricus says the latest Israeli sortie, the third of the day, struck some 40 Hamas targets including tunnels, logistical centers, and a Hamas battalion headquarters.

(Mar 27, 2018 5:08 AM CDT) Linda Brown lived to be 75 years old, but she had secured her place in history by the time she was 9. Brown, who died in her hometown of Topeka, Kan., this week, was at the center of the 1954 Brown v. Board of Education case that caused school segregation to be declared unconstitutional, CBS News reports. Her father, the Rev. Oliver Brown, sued the school district because his daughter wanted to go to the Sumner School four blocks away from her house with her white friends instead of being bused to a school 20 blocks away because she was black. I didn't comprehend color of skin, she later said, per the Washington Post. I only knew that I wanted to go to Sumner. Segregation of white and colored children in public schools has a detrimental effect, the Supreme Court said in its unanimous ruling, striking down the separate but equal doctrine that had stood since 1896. Later in life, Brown worked as a teacher. She remained active in the civil rights movement. In 1979, when her own children were in Topeka schools, she was a plaintiff in a revived Brown v. Board of Education case, arguing that the district hadn't fully followed through on desegregation, the Topeka Capital-Journal reports. A young girl from Topeka brought a case that ended segregation in public schools in America, said Kansas Gov. Jeff Colyer. Her life reminds us that sometimes the most unlikely people can have an incredible impact and that by serving our community we can truly change the world.

(Mar 14, 2019 6:14 AM CDT) Less than a week after the head of the Colombo crime family died, the Gambino crime family has lost its own reputed boss. The demise Wednesday night of Francesco Frank Cali, however, was much more violent and untimely than the passing of Carmine The Snake Persico, who died in a North Carolina medical center at age 85 last Thursday: Cali was shot six times in front of his Staten Island home by someone in a blue pickup truck, shortly after 9pm, the New York Daily News reports. A 911 caller said the 53-year-old was mowed down by the perpetrator's vehicle before he was shot, though that hasn't been confirmed. Cali was pronounced dead at a local hospital. The New York Times notes it's been more than three decades since a Mafia boss was murdered in New York, although lower-level mobsters have recently met that fate. In fact, several outlets have made comparisons between Cali's shooting and that of erstwhile Gambino boss Paul Castellano, who was gunned down in front of a New York City steakhouse in 1985, a killing orchestrated by John Gotti, who then took over the family. CNN notes that since taking over the crime syndicate as acting boss in 2015, Cali stayed under the radar more than the flashier Gotti, who was put away for murder and racketeering in 1992 and died in prison a decade later. The Daily News reports that Cali's ascension in the crime family was a rapid one, with the feds even trying (to no avail) to keep him away from other mobsters after he got out of prison in the late 2000s after serving time for an extortion scheme. There are no arrests and the investigation is ongoing, a police statement notes of his death, per the BBC.

(Dec 12, 2020 6:00 AM) For 14 years, Virginia web designer David Oranchak has been toiling away on one of America's greatest mysteries: the 340 Cipher, a 340-character puzzle sent to the San Francisco Chronicle more than 50 years ago by the infamous Zodiac Killer, who murdered at least five people in the San Francisco Bay Area in the late '60s. Finally, the breakthrough he's been looking for came this month, when he, Aussie mathematician Sam Blake, and Belgian programmer Jarl Van Eycke at long last broke the code that's mystified sleuths since it was sent to the Chronicle in 1969. I feel vindicated, Oranchak tells the Washington Post, admitting that when he first started examining the cipher in 2006, he was confident he'd figure it out almost immediately. I thought, 'Oh, I can just write a computer program and solve it,' but it's been kicking my ass all this time, he tells the Chronicle. Until now. Unfortunately, there's no name in the code, just this basic message: I hope you are having lots of fun in trying to catch me. ... I am not afraid of the gas chamber because it will send me to paradice [sic] all the sooner because I now have enough slaves to work for me. The breakthrough came on Dec. 3, when critical clues finally popped up in the usual mishmash of translated phrases, Oranchak says in a video on how they cracked the code. By Dec. 5, the team had solved the entire cipher and sent it to the FBI, which has since verified the breakthrough. The Zodiac Killer sent three other ciphers to newspapers: One was solved by a schoolteacher and his wife--that one read I like killing because it is so much fun --and two more remain unsolved, one of which contained the killer's name, per the killer. That's the one the code breakers have to work on now, an ex-San Francisco cop who worked on the case tells the Chronicle. We need his name. Much more here and here on the case.

(Nov 11, 2019 6:55 PM) A Massachusetts college student has received a response to a message he threw into the ocean when he was 10 years old, the AP reports. Suffolk University sophomore Max Vredenburgh says he put the letter into a glass wine bottle that he threw into the water at Long Beach in Rockport in August 2010. Vredenburgh's father texted him Friday to say that he had received a letter from someone named G. Dubois who found the bottle on a beach in Southern France on Oct. 10. In Vrendenburgh's original letter he listed some of his favorite things including apples, the beach, and outer space. He also asked that the letter's recipient please write back. The 19-year-old Vredenburgh posted photos of the letters to his Twitter account Friday.

(Feb 19, 2019 1:05 AM) Police in Croatia believe a family that reported a woman missing in 2005 had actually killed her years earlier and stored her body in a freezer. The body of Jasmina Dominic, who was 23 in 2000, when she was last seen, was found in a freezer in the hallway of a family home in a village northwest of Zagreb, the Independent reports. Police say the missing woman's sister, 45-year-old Smiljana Srnec, has been arrested and a post-mortem will be carried out on the body. Srnec lived in the home with her husband and three children, AFP reports. Police spokesman Nenad Risak says that when Dominic was reported missing, the family claimed she had been living overseas, the AP reports. Her father, who died several years ago, said in 2011 that his daughter told him she had been planning to live in Paris or work on a cruise ship. They (family) turned us in other directions, Risak says of the investigation. We checked the house (during the investigation) ... but didn't have information anything could have happened at home. (Last year, a Long Island man discovered the bones of his long-missing father buried below the basement of the family home.)